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Narcissa is no stranger to secrets. As the youngest of three sisters and a member of the House of Black and a Slytherin, she’s grown up collecting them. But she never thought she would be a secret herself.
That doesn’t stop her from slipping into the prefect’s bathroom with an hour until curfew, cautious eyes sweeping up and down the deserted corridor before she enters. Warm hands and smooth freckled arms wrap around her waist as she locks and wards the door behind her. Soft pert breasts press against the middle of her back. She turns and gets a mouthful of red hair for the trouble.
“Lily,” she breathes into coconut scented locks.
“You’re late,” Lily teases. Narcissa sniffs. A Black is never late. She doesn’t say that, though. Lily hates remembering Narcissa’s name.
“Sorry,” she says, instead. She gazes at Lily, pale and on fire at the same time. A torch in the candlelit darkness of the bath.
It’s romantic.
It’s perfect.
It’s not going to last.
Lily sinks into the bath, slowly, and with a groan that sends what feels like lightning through Narcissa’s body. She strips slowly by the door - folds her robes absentmindedly as she does. Lily always laughs at that. Calls it a quirk. Narcissa always sneers when they redress: her robes immaculate from being folded while Lily throws on her robes carelessly, wrinkled from the pile she unceremoniously dumps them in.
This is the best part. She loves to take her time. She watches Lily from the corner of her eye, shimmering in the water. She could be a sea nymph who has come to comfort the lost Persephone before she is stolen away by one master or another.
She can’t hold herself back anymore. Lily is the only person she trusts not to judge her for letting go of her iron clad control. She steps into the bath carefully and feels vivid green eyes on her body. And they crash together. Lily is a force that tears away at Narcissa. Lips and teeth and breath collide. It is messy and frantic and when Lily’s coral lips suck Narcissa’s nipple to a peak she lets out the most embarrassing guttural moan and feels no shame.
Lily is smooth and slick with water and her own wetness under Narcissa’s questing fingers. She loves watching Lily fall apart, the two of them a study in opposing forces. The sea and the shore. Gryffindor and Slytherin. Muggleborn and Pureblood. The sun and a shadow.
Lily’s head falls back and her hips buck against Narcissa’s hand helplessly.
Her orgasm tastes like victory in Narcissa’s mouth, sharp and temporary.
Lily takes Narcissa, then. Narcissa, flat on her back on the edge of the tub, Lily’s lips wrapped tightly around her clit, two fingers buried to the knuckle in her tightening cunt.
She doesn’t want to come. Doesn’t want this to end. But Lily does something. A twitch of her fingers combined with a moan that vibrates through her body and she shatters, eyes and mouth wide and unhinged as she gasps for breath.
In these moments, she feels utterly unlike herself. And more like herself than she has ever been.
Lily backs off almost immediately. She knows by now to give her space after they do this. Narcissa watches through orgasm lidded eyes as Lily licks her fingers one by one, kisses Narcissa’s left kneecap, and swims to the middle of the bathing pool to wash her hair. Her gentleness beings tears stinging to Narcissa’s eyes.
They talk about other things after Narcissa catches her breath and her composure. There is an essay due in Sprout’s class in a few days. Dorcas Meadows was making eyes at the Ravenclaw Quidditch captain. Lily thinks Dorcas stands a chance. Narcissa is insistent that the captain in question has her eye on Kingsley.
They don’t talk about the war. And they don’t talk about Narcissa’s family. Or Lily’s.
She makes Lily laugh when she mocks Slughorn’s most recent Slug Club speech. “I wish other people knew you were this delightful to be around,” Lily says.
It’s the wrong thing to say. Narcissa was not raised to be delightful to be around.
She is an ornament in a crowded room.
Silent and pretty.
She can’t even speak to Lily this way outside of this steamed up room with its hard tiles probably still wet with her come and sweat. She can’t even look at her.
“I wish it could be that way,” she whispers. She picks up a wet flannel and lathers it to wash Lily’s back. The freckles on her shoulders are dark on her skin. A constellation of them along her spine look like Draco.
“It could be,” Lily says, insistent and almost angry.
Narcissa can’t tell if she’s angry at the situation or at her. She thinks of her sisters. Of Andromeda, who is gone. ‘As good as dead,’ her mother says whenever someone brings up the regrettable reality of her choice. She thinks of Bellatrix, fierce and enraged and illogical. She thinks of the Dark Lord and her parents and Sirius.
She doesn’t want to fight. “Perhaps,” she says. She focuses on washing the dimple above Lily’s arse.
“I could love you, you know,” Lily says. And Narcissa hates her. Hates that she could say that. They are three months from graduating. They have lives ahead of them and Narcissa’s could never have Lily in it. She wishes Lily had waited to say that. They could have had three months to pretend that they were each other’s world. Three months to be together and happy in this room.
But Lily could love her. It’s horrible and wonderful. Because Narcissa could love Lily, too.
“I could have loved you,” she admits, moving to step out of the bath, away from Lily. Away from them. Away from the person Narcissa becomes around this tsunami of a witch.
“Then why can’t we-” Lily starts.
“We can’t do anything,” Narcissa cuts in. She puts on her robes. They are unwrinkled and perfect, the pleats on her skirt are sharp.
“But we could be like your sister,” she says.
Narcissa turns slowly. Takes in the vision in front of her. Lily is bare and half way out of the bath, reaching for her. Her hair is wet and plastered to her shoulders. Her green eyes are filled with love and tears. If they actually did try, they’d be like Lily’s sister: distant and miserable, Narcissa thinks.
“I am not like my sister,” she says. Because it’s true. She isn’t like either of her sisters. She isn’t brave or brash. She isn’t strong.
Her mother will have a marriage arranged for her by the time she graduates. Someone has to undo the ruin Andromeda brought on their family’s status. Bella won’t. She doesn’t care, so infatuated is she with her Master.
Narcissa is always making the choices no one else wants to make.
And she has always cleaned up her sisters’ messes.
Lily shucks on her clothes over her wet body. Her hair drips into her robes. They are crumpled. They are a study in opposites. It makes Narcissa want to cry.
They are not for each other.
“Bye, Lily,” she whispers.
She feels Lily follow her to the door. Feels the tug of her hand trying to grab her robes. Lily watches her go and Narcissa doesn’t want to see the look on her face as she does.
She runs.