lights will guide you home

coda
(the dimmer star)

Bellatrix is the one who tells her, comes to her home at dawn and tells her bluntly that Father is dead and that she will not do anything with the body, so it would fall to Narcissa to deal with the situation, before Bellatrix's house began to reek or rotting parents.

(In this moment, Cissy hates Bella.)

Narcissa takes a deep breath and then says that she and Lucius will, of course, take care of Father's estate, that Bellatrix need not worry about it, and where, pray tell, isFather, Bella?

"In my living room."

(In this moment, Cissy recoils.)

So, early dawn light just softening the doorway, Narcissa leaves with Bellatrix and helps her move Father's dead and too-heavy body from her couch to the fireplace, and, then, from the fireplace to Aunt Wallburga's home, where they surely know by now. Bellatrix says she told them, but they wouldn't come help her, not even Mother. Bellatrix is furious that she's been trapped in this house with her dead father, and, while Narcissa doesn't really blame her, she also thinks that Bellatrix ought to be used to death by now.

Narcissa, ever the practical one, uses her wand to levitate Father to his bedroom and onto the bed, then pens a letter to a funeral home to begin making the proper arrangements.

Mother sits in the kitchen, sipping coffee. It was never a secret that Mother and Father never got along so well, but Narcissa thinks that if she can't find it in herself to at least pretend to mourn, than she could help make the arrangements. If nothing else, Father was a Black and deserves to go into the afterlife as any proper Black gentleman would. But Mother doesn't seem perturbed in the slightest.

Aunt Wallburga is a little shaken, but only Narcissa can tell. Idly, she wonders where Andromeda is, and if she'd come to the funeral. But then, she won't be welcome and surely she'd bring that awful Mudblood and their disgusting daughter, so there's no point in even mentioning it to her. Let her discover the facts on her own. After all, she was the one who cut ties with them.

(In this moment, Cissy thinks Black tradition is awfully cruel.)

The funeral director arrives at noon, and Narcissa explains how her sister found her Father dead upon waking this morning (she has no idea when Bellatrix found him, nor what he was doing at Bellatrix's house, nor how he died. She lies to make up the difference.) She explains that he was sick for some time, and while, of course, they were all heartbroken, it was better this way.

He was a good man, Narcissa lies, and we want only the best.

She sets everything up with a cruel precision that Mother would be proud of, if Mother cared to watch. Through the entire funeral, Narcissa does not cry, not once.

(Cissy sobs.)
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(A/N: Merry Christmas, Insanguinare!)