Disclaimers: The idea for this fic came from Kirixchi´s absolutely wonderful story "Fathers. Husbands. Lovers. Sons" (just go and read it - you will love it), the title was stolen from a Guano Apes song and the characters belong to the almighty J.K. Rowling. Only the plot is mine

Kirixchi: thanks a lot and hundredths of chocolate kisses for beta-reading this!!!!

PRETTY IN SCARLET

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Nothing is good

I can't explain

Falling down and caught up the rain

I turn myself into changes

The night I kissed you goodbye

~ Guano Apes/"Pretty in Scarlet"

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She doesn't dye her hair any more. She isn't sure about her reasons, but feels oddly satisfied whenever she looks into the mirror these days, oddly satisfied with the short strands of glossy black hair that fall so nonchalantly into her pale face, creating a stark contrast to the ivory of her skin and the sapphire blue of her eyes. The long blonde mane had come with her engagement to Lucius as she had tried to figure out all the nuances of being a real part of the Malfoy family whose members all came to the world fair-haired and with the look of already having seen too much. Now it is black and short again and she tries very hard to forget that it wasn't like that for seventeen years.

She doesn't always succeed. Often she remembers, with sudden pain, the way Lucius used to stroke over the lustrous golden strands, admiring the way they shimmered in a certain light, stirring golden and silver around her flawless white face and throat. She feels a furious frustration at a universe that let her live so blindly. For seventeen years she was Narcissa Malfoy: perfect and beautiful wife of Lucius Malfoy. She worked so hard to embrace this part that finally it wasn't a role any longer. Now that the curtain has fallen down, she finds it hard to remember how to live away from the stage. But at least she can stand to look into the mirror again.

Draco told her that she looked pretty this way, not like herself at all, but in a lovely, almost girlish way that he clearly didn't approve of in a woman coming close to her forties. Somehow this half-hidden criticism has made her all the more determined. She will never be blonde again.

There are rules to this new project called life. There are things she doesn't think about: the haunted look on Bellatrix´s face when the aurors had brought her lifeless body to the manor; the tears her son shed when he learned about his father's fate; the way cold grey eyes melted to the shade of summer clouds when a handsome face lowered down to her own in the nights.

Of course, it's only reasonable to need some adjusting to this lifestyle, she tells herself, and after all she is getting better at it every day. The first month after they threw Lucius into Azkaban, those horrible days after Voldemort´s fall and Bellatrix´s death, she felt trapped all the time, claustrophobic and panicky, not used to be alone in the big empty house. It wasn't the talking that she missed so much as...being talked to. It had been so easy, sitting there in her favourite armchair, listening to her wonderful image-perfect husband who always knew what to do and what to say. It was easy to let him make all the decisions, if not with her then for her. Perhaps it was too easy.

Draco suggests she should go on holidays for a while, calls her foolish for accepting the job that Arthur Weasley - who, by some ridiculous mood of fortune is now Minister of Magic - has offered her out of pity, but she never listens to her son. She doesn't want to deal with the disturbing fact that she is happy with the unimportant paper work she does every day in the Department of Mysteries. For the first time since Lucius's arrest she feels that there is a purpose in her life, that she has some justification for her outliving her beloved sister. Her whole life, she just clung to whatever came along, first Bellatrix, then Lucius, but gradually she begins to believe that she could survive on her own. Everyday she stands up, brushes her pretty dark hair, applies crimson gloss carefully to her lips, taking some forbidden delight in the knowledge that Lucius despises the shade, and apparates to the Ministry building. She feels made out of glass, yet at the same time, so alive.

The weekends are torment, though, and the silence of the manor threatens to drive her insane. Memories, some happy, some frightening, overcome her. They call her a traitor, and no matter how often she rearranges the furniture, no matter how much she changes the house, she can still feel Lucius standing right behind her in its every corner. Of course she could go to Draco, but seeing her son reliving the life of his father rather than leading his own, seeing his blonde aristocratic young wife who is eager, oh so eager to please and to love him, she feels even worse than in the manor. In the end she chooses the most unusual way out of her misery and buys a flat in Muggle London.

Of course she is conscious of the gorgeous irony of this. She - the wife of a Death Eater, the sister of one, spared from the Dark Mark only because of her seeming fragility - spending her weekends among Muggles! But somehow this hectic, anonymous world, so different from the wizard society where everyone knows everybody else, soon became the only place where she could still breathe freely. She spends hours and hours strolling down the streets, hours and hours she hungrily drinks in the freedom this strange city offers her. She visits Piccadilly and Leicester's Square. She stares at the strange beauty of all the things around her and manages to forget Lucius for a precious few moments.

In order not to attract attention in the crowd, she bought herself some Muggle clothing and in the process she found herself falling in love with the timeless elegance of Christian Dior´s costumes that bring out all her natural beauty with such tricky finesse. Soon the vendors get accustomed to her floating into their shops and picking up a scarlet dress - and it's always a scarlet dress she chooses. Her intriguing eyes will drink in its dark, rich, creamy crimson hungrily before she finally buys it with her seemingly endless funds.

Narcissa has fallen in love with scarlet. For seventeen years she didn't wear anything but frosty pastels or pearly light blue because Lucius complimented the way these colours favoured her pale beauty at the ball where they first met. Nowadays she finds herself tired of those shades. She wants to see colours again. She wants red and crimson and ruby, passion and anger and true emotion and so she gave her whole wardrobe to her daughter-in-law and bought herself a new one, learning for the first time in her life that she looks pretty in scarlet.

She wonders what Lucius would say if he could see her.

In the late evenings, she goes to clubs and drinks expensive cocktails with ridiculous names, enjoying their exotic flavour on her tongue while ignoring the men that stare with admiration at her long legs. Often she stays until dawn and only the arrival of a pair of lovers can cause her to leave earlier. Somehow she cannot endure the sight of them for too long. Her stomach will thrill in recognition, remembering what her own love felt like, how it pressed gleaming into the fabric of her being, in the spaces where she feels only dark, raw emptiness now and she will be miserable for days, before she is able to pull herself together again.

For she misses him, misses him so terribly sometimes that she thinks the longing will kill her, but then she looks into the mirror, sees her short black hair and the charming way it curls in her neck, sees how pretty she looks in scarlet and she straightens herself.

She is Narcissa Malfoy, wife of Lucius Malfoy, and she will not be defeated by these foolish moments of weakness. She will be strong and if fate allows them to see each other again one day, her husband will find a woman that could be so much more for him than the insecure blonde she was throughout their marriage, so much more than she herself had ever dreamed she could be. If, oh if only, one day...

Determinedly she grabs a tube of crimson gloss from her vanity and applies it carefully to her lips. Yes, one day, she tells herself firmly. Until then, all she had to do was to continue this new experiment called life.

FINIS

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According to the question whether Lucius got to knew Narcissa when she was still dark-haired: the answer is yes, but in order to fit into his family, she dyed her hair shortly after that night. I don't think that Lucius truly cared about her hair colour, but – being the egocentric bastard we all adore - he might have liked the idea that she did it just in order to please him ^^