Author’s Note: In no way am I trying to glamorize destructive behavior.  My goal was to show Narcissa came from the same stock as Bellatrix, not to make such things seem tolerable.

What would you do for love? Would you lie for love; cheat and steal for desire?  Go against your very self for a clandestine touch?  Destroy yourself in the pursuit of passion?  Through yourself at evil’s feet to hear your name whispered from the object of your obsession’s lips?  Once you have lied for them, stole for them, ripped yourself apart so that you are only them, would you hurt for them? Kill so to be worthy of them? Risk your own death?  I did.

He will get the Kiss today.  They have told me over and over, but only today did I begin to believe.  He will exist; he will be dead.  I only see him in our son; a ghost that haunts what is struggling to be free.  A ghost that haunts the only thing worth more than him, worth more than I, more than the world itself.  They said that I could write him one last letter; but it is to late now.  I should have understood sooner.  

I will know the moment it happens.  They have sworn it. The Head Auror in charge of the sentence will floo here immediately. And I will be liberated. The cold wind is a welcome sting, but I must go inside. Any moment now.

I remember the question the last man, who came only an hour ago to get the last of the dungeon’s things, asked before leaving me alone.  Well, not really asked me, but asked himself in front of me.  He wanted to know how I could need a man like mine.  How I could still possibly want him; mourn his demise when he had, has and forever will be mine.  Those weren’t his words, “had, has, and forever will be hers,” but he put it so ineloquently I had to fix it.  I don’t care for being talked about like that, but it is true.  Why?

Why did I ever speak to him? It wasn’t his blood status, it wasn’t kindness or caring or talent.  Why do we gravitate towards those who do nothing but ruin us? Because I am ruined now.   Is it that very thing, the fact that they could pull us so low?  I think so.  I watched it consume both of my sisters in mirror fashion.  My oldest went to her grave with nothing but neglect and pain gain from her mania, her fixation. I was not sad to see her go.  Who is to say the younger is any better? She too is ruined, left with nothing but grief.  She does not even have her child anymore, only her daughter’s orphaned brat.  And they say she was the smart one.  She picked the right side.

They fire flare green so I turn to it.  It is a stranger.  He speaks, but I just nod.  His presence is enough.  I am unshackled.  Disappearing into the flames, my husband’s executioner is gone.  Quickly I walk to the dresser and raise the vial.  Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Ophelia, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.  Death will not be satisfied with one half.

I take the vial and am free.