Missing Narcissa

The sun was setting, and Khaat admired the beautiful colors that seemed to be painted across the sky like one of her mother's watercolors. Of all the magic and of all mans' efforts to make impressive displays of light, nothing compared to sunrise and sunset. And the colors were particularly beautiful tonight because it had rained earlier.

Khaat came to pull the weeds around the graves of those she had loved and lost. She walked the cemetary in the quiet of the evening, pullling the sage green shawl closer over the printed silk dress she wore. She stopped at Narcissa's grave, and rage overcame her. Narcissa's tombstone had had a beautiful portrait of Narcissa on it, and someone had defaced it. Narcissa didn't deserve that. The worst thing Narcissa had ever done was to marry Lucius. And youth potion or not, Khaat had always found Narcissa to be a beautiful woman in her own right.

She knelt by the stone and laid her hand on it. "I'm sorry, Narcissa," she said softly. "I'l fix it, I swear. I just wish I could have fixed more." She began ripping up the weeds by the handfuls.

Franki had not often visited her grandmother's grave before this summer. Now it had become a weekly occurrence- and as of late, nearly daily. To consider the possibility that a one Malfoy woman had a choice beyond the Death Eaters, that one had chosen to help Harry Potter... It was enough to make Francesca miss her grandmother as though she had lost apart of herself.

Today she had brought daisies. Her mum was dreadful about gardens- always wanted one, but never maintained it. That's what gardeners are for! she always argued. So she never noticed when Franki stole her flowers. Franki had been apparated here by her favorite elf, Knotty, and she bid him pick her up in an hour's time.

She made her way to the little graveyard, watching the ground, refusing to make eye contact with the people who passed. She did not need to see their judgement, feel it. Everyone had an opinion of the Malfoys- ignorant Death Eaters, or losers at their own game. She didn't need it today.

She glanced up as she entered the graveyard, slowing. Someone was at her grandmother's grave. She slowed and halted a few feet away. All she could see was the flowers she had lain a day before, and some woman seemingly tearing at them. "What're you doing to my grandmum's grave?"

Khaat heard a voice behind her. She spun to see a young woman there, and the likeness to Narcissa was unmistakeable. Dracos' daughter? The last photo she'd seen, Francesca was so young.

"Francesca," Khaat said, smiling, honestly pleased to finally see how the tiny tot in the photos had turned out. "You are so beautiful. You were so tiny in the last photos your grandmother showed me of you. She'd have been so proud of what a stunning woman you've become." Then she remembered the question. "I...I'm sorry. The flowers should certainly stay, but the overgrown grass...the weeds...the thistles...she deserves beauty. Not weeds. Not that. And not ever that..." She gestured to the defaced portrait on the headstone.

"I loved your grandmother," Khaat said softly. "She was...my friend. At the time, she was probably my best friend. I miss her. Truthfully? I miss her a lot."

She had crossed her arms in anger, but as the woman turned around, she addressed Franki, causing the young blonde's arms to droop a little. She continued on, speaking of her, marveling at how she had grown. Franki did not know this woman, and she did not feel like sharing her grandmother with a stranger.

"Who are you?" she said, shifting feet. The woman answered Franki's first question and Franki shrugged. "The mark has been on her for a week and a half now. I can't get it off and the gamekeepers keep saying they will get to it but they haven't moved." She said it as a fact. It hurt her too, but the picture was not her grandmother. Her grandmother was gone.

And finally, the woman responded. Someone who loved her grandmother. Franki slowly moved forward, setting the daisies at her grandmother's grave. "I don't know who you are," she said to the other woman."

"Look," Khaat said, "Our families have never gotten on, but your grandmother and I did. My name is Khaat Lupin. Narcissa and I met at a time when we were both fairly discontent in our lives. Neither of us really gave a jot about the stinking politics. We became friends. We grew rather close." She finished pulling out the weeds and repaired the flowers so that they had a place of honor around the stone.

"Bloody idiots," she said at the mention of the caretakers. She thought for a moment. "Wait..." She got up and went over to the base of a tree where she had laid a canvas bag. She brought the bag over and put it beside her. She had shrunken packages in her bag. One of them was for her mother. Art supplies. She opened the bag and found a bottle of solvent. She got out a white linen handkerchief--one of the few she had left from Rob, and she poured the solvent onto it. She knelt down by the stone again and tended the portrait carefully, as an act of love towards her deceased friend. Once it was clean she looked at the portrait and scowled.. It had been a hideous picture placed there by Lucius. His constant disregard for her knew no bounds.

"She hated that picture" Khaat sighed. "Your grandfather deliberately took it when she didn't look her best."

She opened the bag and drew out a wallet and opened it and pulled out her favorite photo of Narcissa. She looked at her very beautiful best. Glamourous, feminine, and it revealed so much of her personality--the ability to be tough on the outside but the very vulnerable woman on the inside who wanted so much more. Narcissa had signed it to her on the back with an affectionate and personal inscription. Khaat had never removed it from her wallet.

"This was what she looked like at the time of her death," Khaat said. "It was how she wanted to be remembered. Not like that. I don't want them to remember her at her worst. Nobody deserves that. I want them to remember her as she was. I'd like to replace that hideous look in that picture with this one. If I don't, nobody remembers anything except what Lucius wants people to remember about her. And that's just a bunch of rot."

Franki didn't have much to say. This woman had known her grandmother as a friend, Franki only knew her as a grandmother, and she barely remembered her. Franki was named after a woman she knew only faint stories of- her mother did not care to talk about anyone but herself or her children.

What Franki did know of her was a story. A story of how her grandmother stood up and flat out lied to the Dark Lord, straight to his face, to defend an enemy of her family for the sake of her son and honoring a promise. This was not the so-called Malfoy way Lucius spoke of, but Franki liked Narcissa's way.

Not that it was anyone's business.

"I don't know your name," Franki clarified as the woman explained her relation. She was also worrying over the picture. Franki shifted awkwardly- the picture hadn't bothered her. It was a picture. Franki didn't want a picture. She wanted one conversation with her grandmother. Just one.

This woman hated Lucius it sounded like. Honestly, Franki did not much like him, but her family loyalty had been in effect much longer than her doubts. "He is my grandfather," she said, as though reminding the woman that his honor was just as important to keep intact.

"So I gathered," Khaat said, remembering that Lucius had always demanded loyalty even when it didn't merit it. He was an ass. She changed the photo and rid the headstone of the one that clearly the embittered Lucius had put there to one that Narcissa would have approved of. She tore the removed, ugly photo up into tiny pieces. It simply made her feel better to do it.

"I know why I come," Khaat said quietly. "I come to remember. You don't have that reason. Why are you here? What do you hope to gain in coming?"

Khaat had tried to find her way across, through Remus, to try to find Narcissa for that one last conversation. But it had never been successful. It was as if Narcissa didn't have any desire for contact with the mortal world again. And why would she? There were few things it had to offer her in life, so why should she want it after death? And surely she would not want her granddaughter to know the truth. The unpleasantness that had so marinated itself throughout almost every part of Narcissa's llife. In every part but perhaps one. Maybe two. Perhaps Francesca was better off not knowing that.

There was a barrier between this woman and Franki. It seemed that this woman was only loyal to Narcissa, and the rest of the family didn't appear to be quite so beloved. Franki sensed that this woman was feeling her out, trying to see if she was like Narcissa, different from the family, the woman's opinion of better.

But Franki did love her family. She was a Malfoy, how could she be ashamed of where she came from? She would be a horrid daughter to scorn her family and be disloyal to them in front of a stranger. This woman wanted an answer like that and, as much as Franki was different, she was still like her grandmother in one way. She would swallow her opinions for the sake of her family.

"I'm here because she's my grandmother, and I want to honor her," Franki said. "I don't see what anyone can gain from visiting a grave, besides the sense that they have honored those that formed their own comfort. I love and miss my grandmother. So I honor her."