Pairing: Narcissa/Molly.

Rating: R.

Summary: It's hard to be a good Hufflepuff when you know in your heart of hearts that you were born to be a Slytherin. A young Narcissa hovers on the brink; a seemingly hopeless love may pull her into the light, or push her further into the bitter darkness. Precanon Molly Weasley/Narcissa Malfoy femmeslash.

Author's Note: The Prologue and Epilogue to this story are set immediately after "The Chamber of Secrets." I know that all the Malfoys by birth were Slytherins, but Narcissa only married one. Oh, and I decided that Molly is a Weasley herself, just a distant cousin to her husband.

Dedications: To my beloved Floria, for sweet memories of reading Harry Potter together, and to Asterix, to whom I just kept promising to write something Potterish…

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters owned by J.K. Rowling. The description of the game the Hufflepuff girls play is strongly based on the advertising blurbs of a real game, Lovers' Secret Garden, sold by cyber adult shops everywhere. Not that I ever browse them…

:prologue:

Brothers, lovers, husband, wives

Hard to tell who's loving who…

Too many choices tear us apart,

I don't want to live like that…

- "Elaborate Lives" from Eltonn John's Aida.

Narcissa Malfoy murmured, "Yes, dear," without any kind of conscious order from her brain, and stared at her fingernails. She realized two things with the same kind of dull annoyance. One was that the porcelain nail on the index finger on her left hand was beginning to split, and she would have to make an appointment to have it fixed. The other revelation, which seemed no more dramatic or important but merely inconvenient, was that she hated her husband.

She had always known she disliked him. Somewhere, there might be lesbian witches who were quite fond of their husbands, who were content with their choice of marriage, easy conception of pureblood children and social position. They probably weren't married to Lucius Malfoy, which would of course make all the difference in the world.

 

Now, listening to Lucius rage about Dumbledore and Potter, she felt her resentment and scorn of him slowly congeal into a satisfyingly ugly lump of hatred. She almost liked it; it was something quite delightfully hideous and uncontrolled in her pristine life. She imagined it spilling over the cream marble floor, as black and putrid as… her husband's heart. And hers, just perhaps.

She hadn't responded to his rantings for too long. Careless of her, but then, Narcissa had always had a dangerous tendency to lose focus at stressful moments. She caught Lucius' suspicious gaze, and said, her voice it's usual soft, detached drawl, but coming straight from her newly recognised hatred this time, "Was endangering the child of such an old wizarding family… wise, my dear?"

Draco's bloodless face twisted into a sulky pout. It was an expression that he was much too old to get away with, his mother reflected. "Who cares? She was only a Weasley – they would just breed another within a week. They're like cockroaches."

Narcissa stared blankly at her son and tried to decide if she hated him too. She had always had the ability to separate some icy, conscious part of her mind from her emotions, as if they belonged to someone else. As if there were two Narcissas, the feeling hurting Narcissa, and this cool woman who watched and analysed her emotions as a fascinated observer. It was useful, in the life she led. Trophy wife to one of Voldemort's formerly open supporters wasn't a particularly easy job in the present anti-Dark Magic, pro-Muggle political climate.

Now she sifted through her emotions with almost clinical detachment, analyzing them. For her son Draco she felt anger… disgust… pride and disappointment tangled together so closely she could not, even in her strange mood, unravel them… and something strong, dark, passionate… Not hatred, but pure love, the overwhelming rush of tenderness she had felt when she first held him to her breast, still live and strong. Her child, her blood, her precious baby… She loved this weak, pathetic little bully of hers, with his fractured ego and inadequate spite, with a deep and passionate emotion that meant she would give up anything… anything… to try and shield him from himself, from his father.

Even remain married to Lucius…

Draco's personality problems, intrusive as they were, weren't, in all fairness, entirely Draco's fault. There was real potential in the child, potential that still shone suddenly through the dull layer of his brutality and his heavy-handed attempts at wit. Draco had quite good brains under his stupid behaviour and maybe, just maybe, some remaining decency under the putrid layers of spoiling, and despite his terminally chipped shoulder. She sometimes glimpsed, through her fiercely protective love, the child he might have been if he had had a different father. If he had not grown up with the excruciating burden of being constantly told he should be better than others – and wasn't.

Maybe she had helped destroy Draco herself, spoiling him in a futile attempt to make up for Lucius' lack of love, ruining what she loved best…

 

We have only each other, weak though we are, Draco, she told him silently. Your father is not on our side, whatever he himself may think.

She carefully inspected the perfect false nails on her other hard, smooth and beautiful and unreal. The part of her mind still attending to the conversation, with almost ravenous concentration, as if she could split her mind into pieces as well as her soul, noted that Lucius was attempting heavy wit on the subject of Weasleys and inbreeding. She considered pointing out that the Weasleys might have married distant cousins, but at least they still had chins. In the end, she decided against it. She could not – would not – hurt her son like that, even to slap out at her husband.

She abruptly snapped back to full, sharp concentration, the shards of her soul cleaving into one again. Lucius was talking directly at her, his eyes hard with concentration and vindictiveness.

 

"I wish that whining redheaded brat had died," he said. Scrutinising her for any giveaway sign of reaction, letting her know that his hatred of the Weasleys was as much her fault as any Muggles, that if the child had died, it would have been because of Narcissa.

Molly Weasley's only daughter might have died - because of her.

Narcissa rose and left the room, not caring that Lucius, who was still speaking, let his eyes spark with cruel amusement as she left, or that Draco was calling after her. She laid herself on her bed, perfectly manicured hands fisted, and let the painful tide of memory sweep her back to Hogwarts.