Chapter Text
Lucius was surprised by the opening of the door as he was getting dressed. It was Narcissa, of course, and he turned without urgency, still adjusting his tie. "Goo—"
"Crucio!"
He wasn't ready for the pain. His body was consumed in the sort of agony he hadn't felt in years. He lost everything of himself to that pain.
By the time he was conscious again he was on the floor, trying to shove himself up in the corner, trying to get away from the pain. "What—?" His cane — his wand — was out of reach. Narcissa was standing over him, wand focused on him, her other hand clenched in a fist, her expression wild and full of hate. She lifted her wand again and he flinched, bringing his arm up between them. "No! Tell me what it is!"
"You cannot talk your way out of this!" She slammed down her wand and he flinched away from the gouge it put in the wardrobe. "Where is he?!"
"Who?!" She snarled furiously and he ducked behind his hand again. Who— But there was only one thing she ever thought about. "Draco? He's in the Ministry — he's safe!" He grabbed a drawer to pull himself up.
"Lies!" Her magic yanked the drawer out of his hand and threw him back to his knees. "What have you done with him?"
He got back to his feet despite her, though he was held at bay by her wand. "Narcissa! Get ahold of yourself!" The anger was a relief and he made little effort to rein it in.
Her wand didn't waver from him. "Tell me where he is."
"You know where he is! Put your wand down and I'll take you—"
"No! I'll not let you lay another hand on him!" She threw another spell, but this time he was in a position to grab her arm and deflect it to the side.
He got his hands on her wand but she wouldn't relinquish it; they ended up struggling over it, amidst a shower of sparks that shot from the end of the wand to blind him. She just wouldn't let go!
With a burst of angry strength he forewent any self-control and slammed her into the wall of drawers, and as she fell the wand finally ripped free of her hand.
"Stupefy!"
He caught his breath. She was on the floor, stunned unconscious. His only feeling at the sight was of severe annoyance. She'd attacked him, for what? Her own baffling insecurities? She convinced herself he had 'stolen' Draco? What was wrong with her?
No, that was right — what was wrong with her?
Narcissa wasn't weak-minded or fanciful. If she was convinced of that, it wasn't from her own imagination. Imperius? Probably not, he still believed she would resist it. The Confundus was more likely, though, or a cursed item planted on her. 'Aethellew' was using her to attack him.
"Narcissa." His anger redirected where it belonged, it could rise to the level it deserved and be held back, out of the way. He crouched beside her and felt her chest to make sure she was breathing properly. She didn't respond to his voice, but that wasn't a surprise.
He retrieved his wand and came back to cast the revivification charm. He did keep her wand, though, to be safe.
She didn't respond to the charm, either.
He frowned and crouched down beside her again, considering whether she had hit her head when she fell. There was no blood or obvious injury he could find, but he did realise that there was something wrong. The boneless way her stunned head lolled in his hand emphasised how loose and thin her skin felt. Her dress was no longer tailored to fit properly, he could see now. Her bones were near the surface; he lifted her hand, and her wedding ring nearly slipped off her finger. The sleeve of her dress slipped down to show how thin her arm really was. He was uncomfortably aware of fragile she felt in his hands. She felt… frail.
She had lost so much weight. When had this happened? When he'd put her to bed here that night she was drunk, she hadn't been in this state, he was sure of it. That hadn't been that long ago.
"Elf! Send Narcissa's elf here, now."
"Yes, Master!"
He took the moment to vanish away any makeup and cosmetic charms, and found her face sallow and drawn, with dark circles under her eyes and lines of tension around her mouth and brow she hadn't had before.
"Master called for Mogger?" a small voice asked, then gasped. "Mistress! Mogger is sorry!" A particularly ugly elf with bandaged fingers threw itself down at her side.
"Away," he snapped, and it scrambled back, cringing. "Does she take breakfast before she leaves for the day?"
"Not always…"
"How often? When was the last time she did?"
"Friday, Master."
The day after Draco went. "Does she eat in the evening?" He hadn't seen her for supper in over a week, even when she indicated she would be there.
"Sometimes… More often it gets sent back… Mogger has tried! Mogger and other elves have tried to send food Mistress likes, all of her favourites, but she doesn't want it!"
She hadn't been eating since Draco had gone into hiding, unless she was eating at the hospital. He'd check, but he thought he knew the answer already. What else had she been depriving herself of? "Bring her down to her room and fetch the healer."
"Yes, Master!"
"Let me know when she wakes." He laid Narcissa's hand on her stomach and stood up out of the way.
As the elf levitated her gently from the floor, her clenched fist fell open and something rolled from her hand, bouncing once on the floor. He stopped it with his foot before it could roll into the corner, and picked it up only after the elf was gone.
It was a small crystal ball with something moving inside of it. He covered it so it was dark enough to focus on, and recognised it as a bauble expensive enough even he would notice the price — one could put a memory inside of it and have it always on display. Drifting through it was a fragment of the memory that had been sent to Rita Skeeter.
He clenched it in his fist, seething with anger with no one to direct it toward. It was no wonder she should attack him, if she thought this were real. If she believed that was really him — or, worse yet, if she believed that was really Draco — he should count himself lucky he wasn't dead.
But she should not have believed it. She should have known it was a trick, an attack. She was not foolish or hysterical; she was cunning and quick to see schemes and opportunities even in the heat of an excitable moment, with a will and a confidence of steel. Why had she fallen for it? He was back to some Confunding artefact or curse that had left her vulnerable to manipulation. He saw very little other possibility.
Whilst the elf was tending to her, he finished dressing and dashed off a note to Jansen that he enchanted with the Ministry's memo charm and sent through the floo, to get someone here to search for curses.
He was going over the drawing room himself when they arrived, Jansen and his go-to cursebreaker Hawke. "My wife was compelled to attack me," he said promptly, not bothering with a greeting. "I doubt it was done directly, so I will need you to check several rooms for anything influencing her. Come with me."
He led them through the hall to Narcissa's parlour. She had been laid on the main sofa and their regular private healer wizard was tending to her. She still wasn't up.
"This room and the adjoining suite," he instructed, pointing them toward the remodeled rooms. "The drawing room where you entered. An elf will show you to the room upstairs where she sleeps."
Hawke didn't appreciate being here and was indignant at being treated like she worked for him, but he frankly didn't care, so long as she did her job. "I'll check her first." She left her offense in her mind where it belonged and stepped up to Narcissa. The healer stepped back to join him.
"How is she?"
"Minor injuries; a few bruises, a broken wrist, all dealt with already. '
Broken wrist. He supposed he had done that. He hadn't intended it… but he did remember, for that moment, that he hadn't cared. He was not proud of that moment, and he pushed it down. "Why isn't she awake?"
He adjusted his spectacles. "I'm still working on that."
"We may have found the culprit." Hawke gingerly lifted Narcissa's pendant from her chest with the tip of her wand.
He glanced at it dismissively. "No. She made that."
"It's pulsing," she pointed out. "What is it meant to do?"
He debated for a moment, but if it would help her it was worth giving up her secrets. "It's bound to our son's heartbeat, so that she can watch over him when she can't be with him."
Hawke glanced at him, as though to check he was telling the truth. "Well, it is draining her." She ran her wand over it and it glowed red, which he supposed was meant to show him something. Presumably that it was harmful magic.
He looked at Narcissa's drawn face, unpleasantly lit by that red glow. "Take it."
When she unlatched it from Narcissa's neck, Narcissa weakly shifted and frowned, seemingly to briefly reach for it, but it wasn't enough to rouse her.
"It isn't behind this incident. Keep looking."
"I will." She sounded annoyed but obeyed, moving on to the remodelled rooms.
The healer went back to Narcissa, and he stepped back, watching but not interfering. He couldn't think of anything more productive to do. Jansen was still here, he discovered, but didn't much care.
"Master," an elf's voice called from behind him, and he looked down. Narcissa's elf pushed a small wooden chest onto the coffee table and slinked back. "Mogger has punished himself!" he swore. Hence the bandages. "Mistress said to dispose of them, but… Mogger thought they were important…" He wrung his hands and looked on with drooping ears, staying out of reach.
Yet more disobedient elves. The elf cringed from his look and he let it go after a second, and flipped open the box. He expected something more than a few papers. "What is this?" He picked up a stack of newspaper clippings, and was unpleasantly taken by surprise when it was Draco's obituary; flipping through them showed they were all the same. The stack trembled in his hand and swelled, but had been bound tightly together, so whatever it was trying to do was stymied.
"'Gifts', Master… Left around the house for Mistress by Eggsy…"
'Gifts.' He flipped through some of the others. A framed photograph of Draco chained to the Wizengamot chair. A letter labelled 'mother' that said Draco would never return, and stained his hands red. Scraps of paper with jumbled letters that reassembled into phrases about love. A cruel accusatory note made from letters cut from the newspaper. A photograph of her and Draco clipped from the Prophet , defaced with red ink, sobering because he had seen the same picture with nearly the same vandalism pasted in the notebook Draco had hidden.
"There was more, Master… Howlers from Master Draco. Mogger intercepted one, so Mistress didn't open it! But it went off late at night anyway…" It pulled on its ears. "Some of Master Draco's hair. Mogger didn't want to destroy that, Mogger put it in Master Draco's room. Mogger doesn't know what Mistress found this morning, but she kept it…"
"I've already found it."
"Important?" Jansen asked, going through the box himself.
He gripped his wand handle to stop himself from gripping the foul crystal ball in his pocket. "Pearl of Memory."
"Hm. We had one of those stolen this week. I suppose we can mark that solved." He looked over. "The same memory?"
Lucius nodded. The healer was holding Narcissa's wrist to track her heartbeat, and he pushed down the feelings that gave him. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing…" The healer glanced at him, then returned his attention to her.
Hawke returned from the adjoining suite before he could follow up on that. "I assume she isn't responsible for this." She was levitating the mantel clock from the bedroom. He recognised it as something which had appeared during Narcissa's remodelling, not something which had come from the house. Which meant she might be responsible for it, actually.
"What is it?"
"Insomnia curse. Insidious things, and on a clock… The ticking would heighten the effect. It's ingenious, actually." She looked at him directly. "So, this isn't another of hers I should ignore, is it?"
"No." He stared at the cursed clock. So simple, and so evil. "She's been sleeping in that room for the better part of a week."
"I guarantee she hasn't." The clock carefully disappeared into an expanded bag on Hawke's belt. "I'll go over the rest, but I think removing that will solve a lot of problems."
That was probably the answer in itself. No mind control was present — no mind control was necessary, when such subtle cruelty was in play. A week without sleep would soften the resilience of any mind; it would be enough to drive most people mad. Since Draco had gone into hiding, she had been spending her nights with her dark thoughts, the constant torment of those 'gifts', and Draco's heartbeat as a lifeline but also a constant, inescapable reminder. She must have been hanging on by a thread. It was no wonder she eventually snapped.
He had to reexamine his assumptions. She hadn't been used to attack him; it wasn't about him at all. 'Aethellew' had been trying to ruin him, but he was torturing her. Why?
Why hadn't he known?
"That explains it," the healer said. "It's what I thought, but I couldn't see why… She's sleeping. She's simply exhausted, and the stun put her into a state where she can rest."
"Good," he murmured.
"She needs the rest," he went on. "I wouldn't be surprised if she sleeps twelve hours or more. Let her sleep as much as she wants for a few days. Hopefully that will give her back her appetite, but, if not, that can be dealt with. That should be monitored for a few weeks, too; she needs to regain some strength. I could tend to her here at home…"
Lucius looked at the box of horrors collected from these halls. "Take her to St Mungo's."
He seemed relieved at the instruction. "At once."
Lucius handed over the Pearl of Memory to Jansen and went with her.