Chapter One: The Wedding
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize.
My mother always told me that when I married, it would have to be to a rich, pureblood family. That bloodlines were everything and that if I let her and father down the way my dear sister, Andromeda, had, then I'd end up getting the same treatment as she did. Blown off the face of the Black Family Tree. I didn't expect for Father to pick a husband for me as he had Bellatrix, through. I mean, Bella was always his favorite daughter, and I was Mother's. After Andromeda dashed off with the Muggle, I suppose he felt like he needed to choose an even better match for me.
When my father told me that he had found me a husband, I didn't expect the wedding to be scheduled so quickly. I didn't expect to walk down the aisle with a man I barely knew, either. I was basically instructed to live my life at his side, and bear his children. I had no idea what to expect. My father was good friends with Abraxas Malfoy and had looked up to this man for so long. Mother had told me that Father was ecstatic about my impending marriage. However, I went to Hogwarts with Lucius and we weren't incredibly close. He found me incessantly annoying because I wouldn't worship him like the rest of the House did. I found him rather strange. He was the last person I could ever envision myself marrying. But there I was, two years later, about to pledge the ultimate act of undying love.
Mother zipped up the side of my white wedding gown and stepped in front of me.
"I remember when I married your father," she said, smiling reminiscently. "I was so unsure of what I was doing. But it was for the best. I know you are going to be so incredibly happy, my dear."
I tried to smile.
"Okay, Cissy…" Mother said, sighing. "They're ready for you." She kissed me on the cheek and smiled at me once more. She then handed me my bouquet of red roses.
I turned around and headed through the door and over to the entrance of the huge chapel of the church, down the hall. Two men in long black robes opened the doors and music immediately started playing. Father took my right arm and I looked straight down the aisle as we started to walk down it. It seemed so long. Everyone stood up and I spotted Lucius at the end of it. Mother walked around me and tiptoed down the side of the chapel to her seat.
Lucius and I locked eyes as I walked down the aisle. I hadn't seen him in two years, but he still looked almost exactly the same. I couldn't sense any expression in his eyes. I smiled at him slightly and he didn't return my smile. We finished our trip down the aisle and everyone sat back down as I sulked up the stairs to stand next to Lucius.
The priest smiled at both of us before he started speaking.
"We are gathered together on this beautiful afternoon to share with Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black as they exchange vows of their everlasting love."
I tried to avoid rolling my eyes. I was shaking with silent laughter. Me? In love with Malfoy? Ha. No.
"Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" the priest asked.
Mother and Father stood before the wedding guests.
"Her Mother and I," he said boldly.
"The vows you are about to exchange, will serve as a verbal representation of the non-verbal emotions that are as real as any thing that can be seen, heard or touched.
For it is not the words that you will speak today that will bond you together as one --- but the strength of the love and commitment found deep within your souls," the priest continued.
Love and commitment? I thought. I don't have love or commitment to offer him!
The priest stopped and smiled at both of us.
"At this time, I'll ask you Lucius and Narcissa to face each other and take each other's hands."
I did what he instructed, all the while, thinking the priest needed to hurry up and get this over with and stop torturing me. I noticed that Lucius's hands were really smooth and soft. I looked up at him and he looked back expressionlessly.
The priest nodded to Lucius and he turned to his cousin behind him. I wasn't sure what his cousin's name was. He then turned back to me and spoke.
"I, Lucius Malfoy, take you, Narcissa Black, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times, and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love and honor you all the days of my life." He slipped the wedding ring his cousin had given him onto my finger.
The priest then nodded to me.
I turned to Bellatrix, my maid of honor, and took Lucius' wedding band from her. I turned back to him and ask I spoke, I placed the ring on his finger, as he had mine. "I, Naricssa Black, take you, Lucius Malfoy, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love and honor you all the days of my life."
The priest smiled once more after the process had been completed.
"Inasmuch as Lucius and Narcissa have consented in holy wedlock and have witness the same before God, according to the powers vested in me by this state and being an ordained minister of the Gospel, I pronounce that you are husband and wife. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder."
The organ began to play and Lucius took my left hand. We walked back down the aisle.
There was no wedding reception planned. I kissed Mother and Father goodbye and Lucius opened the door to the carriage for me. He helped me into it and followed me into the carriage and shut the door.
"So, we're married," I said quietly, the shock not entirely worn off yet.
Lucius didn't respond.
"Are you even going to say two words to me at all?" I begged him. "You're going to have to say something sooner or later."
He looked at me and sighed.
"You know you didn't have a choice to marry me. So what makes you think I decided to marry you? I did it to please my father. You were the only pureblood girl he knew. So he chose you." He folded his arms. "We have absolutely nothing in common."
"Maybe not, but we need to make this work," I said.
"Who says?" Lucius said sullenly.
"Look, this isn't my fault. It's not yours either. But we need to make it work and we don't really have a choice! So for you to sit on your butt, being adamantly against it isn't going to help anything! I know we're not friends and we didn't like each other during school, but we need to put that behind us!"
Lucius didn't answer. I sighed in frustration and turned back around. "Where are we going?" I asked him.
"Home," he said simply.
I didn't ask questions.
The thestrals brought the carriage up to a huge manor about thirty minutes later. Lucius got out and walked up to the door and into the manor. Once I had finally got into the manor, he had disappeared. I signed and began exploring the house.
This marriage had gotten a rocky start. And I wasn't sure where it was going to go from here.