Lucius carried Narcissa back to the Manor, sleepy and warm in his embrace. He knew the way well from a boyhood spent in the broomshed, waiting for the Manor to become a home.

Inside, they tipped into bed together; she murmured that she was cold and he wrapped the down comforter around her, and then his arms around that. Lucius found he couldn't stop kissing her, his lips constantly pressed against her neck as she drifted in and out of sleep.

"Have I been so neglectful?" he wondered aloud. "It feels that we've never been this way together."

"Not true," she muttered.

"But it's been a long time."

"My fault."

He unfurled her arm from the covers and lifted her left hand out, spinning her wedding ring around and around.

"I couldn't stand to tell you I had to leave. I couldn't make it real."

"How long?"

"Narcissa, it may be a very long time. Over a month."

"Come home at night."

"Cissy…you know it isn't like that. You remember when you were in school."

"I know."

She was waking again, he could tell, but was still pretending to play her drowsiness as a trump card.

"Please go stay with your parents. I can't imagine you here all alone."

She rolled over into the space waiting for her. More kisses, softer than he'd ever given. Her eyes were very fiery when he pulled back.

"This is my home Lucius. I won't leave it for the world."

He could barely get out her name before he was on top of her, and then rolling over again to drag her over him.

"Does that please you?" she laughed.

"God, Narcissa, of course it does. You've acted such a stranger here."

"I'm not willing to be a stranger any longer. I will be here when you return."

"When I return," he breathed, beginning to work the fastenings of her dress in a frenzy, "I will give you your baby."

The promise wasn't necessary; within two weeks of his going, Narcissa had a secret, and for once in her life it was only for the want of someone to tell.

It was more than a month alone, more than two. Narcissa spent most of it in a haze of porcelain tile and crackers, sipping sparking water with her meals as worried elves disposed of uneaten breakfasts. Dobby, the only one who had been with them as newlyweds, noticed more than any of them the change; Narcissa barely touched her coffee anymore.

Cissy spent her mornings, after she peeled herself off the bathroom floor, praying fervently before the bedroom window. No one had ever taught her of any reason to pray like this, but she found she had to do something as she waited.

"Just let him live," she repeated again and again. She said it so often she had forgotten whom she meant.

Of course, the Manor wasn't really empty. She had her wing, declared in no uncertain terms by Lucius to be only for family life, but there were always others just beyond the door. Those either more or less favored than Lucius, who, in her eyes, were lucky to be safe in her home. They did not ask for Narcissa, again, having been ordered by Lucius not to, but she dutifully served as hostess to them during the day. She would not have Lucius return to a home she had left untended, or to a master who called his wife ungrateful, unhelpful. She had skills to offer, and learned quickly that when you thought husbandless early pregnancy couldn't get any worse, you could add translating sickening Dark Arts texts to your to-do list.

She suspected he wasn't meant to, but Lucius would send the barest scraps of paper with the scraggliest owls, just a few cliched words at a time to let her know he was alive. Narcissa turned away the newspaper now, willing to pretend she couldn't see how much lower the clouds had been growing around the Manor. She was not able to imagine the places Lucius was, where he slept, who else was there. He had not been descriptive about this time away; she didn't know how much he was truly fighting and how much he was buying dark artifacts, selling promises, meeting horrible creatures. Maybe one day she'd be brave enough to ask, when now became the past.

Narcissa walked as far as she could each morning, not leaving the grounds but still, circling the fence line until her it felt like her legs wouldn't hold. Breakfast and lunch were taken alone in the little sitting room near their bedroom, and then after lunch she'd make something of herself and have one last peppermint for her stomach and walk down the stairs and through to the other wing of the Manor, where papers were strewn across every surface and increasingly ghoulish people showed up every day. But Bellatrix and Cecily were usually there, keeping a somewhat proper womanly little corner, and Narcissa would sink down into a chair next to them, and some others who had come from their years at school. There was certainly a class divide, although if the Dark Lord was there he would circulate amongst them all. But those surrounding Narcissa were young men as handsome and bright as Lucius and young women as charming and absolutely cutting as she – where or how the Dark Lord had gotten the others, she didn't know. The air always felt sharp with the power of those assembled, and Narcissa thought she had never felt that way before among only her classmates.

Occasionally she'd make the journey to eat with her parents, but it was preferable to have her sister or Cecily stay and dine with her. Fewer questions and a shorter meal, and then she'd be off to her bath to marvel at herself.

Cecily was not so unbearable anymore, although she hadn't changed. Narcissa supposed Cecily still pitied her, but she was no longer worthy of it, and it rolled off. Occasionally their girlish laughter filled the halls again, and when it did Narcissa yearned to grasp her old friend by the arm and tell her the truth. It hadn't been that long ago that sharing such a thing would have been the most wonderful cause of celebration, although it wouldn't have been babies then. Maybe both being invited to the Yule Ball by the boys they liked, or some other now unimportant thing. Jealousy and power had tarnished the connection, and somehow every time she thought kindly of Cecily, Narcissa could not help but follow it with a reminder to herself that, of course, her baby would be legitimate. Wanted. Chosen.

Then there came a week when she couldn't do it any longer. She was too weak, too tired, too sick. Narcissa stayed in bed and let dry toast pile up next to her and had the Healer there each day, each day assured again that she was normal, healthy, even though she didn't feel it.

But she was so hungry. Dobby could not have been more dutiful with his deliveries of broth and tea and weakened coffee and ice cream that barely had a flavor. None of it could sustain her but nothing else could stay down. It was alarming to lay there and see herself grow and think that maybe it was only an optical illusion, the baby appearing larger against herself shrinking.

She sent notes downstairs telling them she was sick, but really what could she say? Narcissa had vowed to tell Lucius first, but it was growing impossible to think straight. Shouldn't someone know, shouldn't she be taken care of by another human being – her mother, her sisters? Andromeda came in and out of her mind; should she tell her? It would hardly be a secret ruined if the only other person who knew didn't speak to your family at all.

And what of the Dark Lord, of the hospitality she had held herself to? She begged Dobby through tears to have the elves keep everything tidy downstairs, to bring drinks and food and to keep the vases full.

Suddenly too, the things she had not dared to think about Lucius became real, seeping through her dreams and then into her waking. The baby would be fatherless and she would again just be a guest in her mother-in-law's house, hanging on to dignity by a thread, stupid enough to have believed that Andromeda really had had something she wanted for herself.

The weekend passed, although weekends meant little, but it did mean that it had been long enough that Bellatrix couldn't stay away, and she didn't bother to announce her intentions to arrive on Sunday evening. Narcissa was feeling well enough to be propped up however slightly, nursing broth as salty as she could stand it. She felt she would have eaten salt with a spoon if the Healer would let her.

"I've told Him what's wrong with you and He sends congratulations. No one else will know, although they're not dumb enough not to."

"What's wrong with me?" Narcissa croaked.

"You've finally got what you wanted, haven't you?"

Narcissa was quiet.

"You should see what the elves have done down there. Bowers. How much does that cost in November?"

"You know I don't know, Bella."

"Cissy, you should have known that the Dark Lord never cared if you were there or not or if there was a tea service or hothouse lilies."

"Men think they don't care until it's gone."

"He's not a usual man."

Narcissa's lips were chapped desperately. She paused to wet them.

"I don't know where Lucius is, Bella. I don't know what he's been asked to do, and no one is foolish enough to say around me. If things don't stay peaceful in his home, what may be asked of him in punishment?"

Bellatrix was rarely thoughtful, less often genuinely so. But the sisters sat in silence then, Narcissa's fingers running across her peeling face. Bellatrix had made her way to the window, and grasped the windowsill.

"I will relinquish to you for once, Cissy," she finally said, turning but not coming closer. "All you can be is careful. And the best thing you can do is get up."