Pretty In Pink (And Green)
Chapter Two:
The In Between
"Narcissa! Narcissa, over here!"
I turned away from Bellatrix to see Angela Stafford, a friend of mine since first year. She came from a good Pure-blood family in Kent, and was my really only possible rival and therefore, my dearest friend.
"Hello, Angela!" I said warmly, kissing her cheek. "How was your summer?"
"Oh, Mother and Father decided to take Aurelia and I Paris and Rome," Angela drawled, bored as usual. "It was dreadfully boring, of course. Aurelia decided to sneak off with some French wizard one night, without telling anyone. Mother was so worried that now she has to marry Felix Carey!" Angela pulled a face at his name. The Careys were a Pure-blood family as well, but they had reached their peak of influence back in the days before that squib Anne Boleyn was Queen of Muggle England. Now they're about as well recommended as the Montagues, with the same level of unseemliness. Aurelia had to be furious.
"That's certainly more exciting than my summer," I said, kissing Bella and my parents goodbye, and beckoning for Krilly, our House-Elf to follow me with my trunk. I observed that Angela's House-Elf was doing the same. "I had Bella's wedding, of course, but you were there. Mother and Father took me to Hartfordshire, with my cousins. The peak of excitement was when Sirius told Kreacher to throw himself down the grand staircase, which is just cruel," I added. It was. I wasn't for treating House-Elves as equals, of course, and they had to obey orders – and it was only right to punish them if they didn't – but telling an Elf to throw itself down the stairs was cruel. If Kreacher had died, Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion would be without a House-Elf, as we only had Krilly now, and we couldn't dare spare her.
"The grand staircase?" Angela repeated. "My, that's certainly a long fall. It didn't die, did it? I can't imagine if Mr. and Mrs. Orion Black were forced to be without a House-Elf. They might not get any more invitations!"
"I know!" I agreed.
"Here comes trouble," I heard Angela mutter under her breath.
I followed her gaze to find Lucius Malfoy, his Head Boy badge shining in the light. He was walking toward us.
"Hello, Miss Black, Miss Stafford."
"Hello, Mr. Malfoy," I said. "Pray tell, are you Head Boy this year?"
Lucius Malfoy smirked. "But of course, dear Miss Black."
"Narcissa, I'm going to go find us a compartment," Angela said, abandoning me. "Good day, Mr. Malfoy."
"Good day, Miss Stafford."
"Yes, I'll see you soon, Angela. Krilly!"
The Elf jumped. "Yes, Mistress Narcissa?" she squeaked.
"You are to follow Miss Stafford and deposit my luggage in her compartment. Then you are to return to Mother and Father."
"Yes, Mistress Narcissa," she squeaked, before trotting off to follow Angela and her Elf.
"I haven't seen you since your sister's wedding in June, Miss Black. May I inquire as to how your summer was?"
"Of course, Mr. Malfoy, though I'm afraid that any details that I might give you would be terribly dull."
"Oh? I'll have to regale you with my escapades this summer sometime soon, Miss Black. But for now, I'm afraid; I have to go meet the Head Girl and prefects. May I escort you to your compartment first?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Malfoy. I think that I can manage."
He nodded. "Ladies first, then," he said, helping me onto the Hogwarts Express. He bowed his head in farewell as we went in opposite directions. I spotted my cousin Sirius talking with a boy who had unsightly messy black hair.
"Sirius," I began, walking over to him. "Who, pray tell, is your companion?"
"I'm James Potter," the boy said, puffing out his chest. He had wire-frame glasses as well. The Potter family, at least, was a respectable pure-blood family. They had no blood traitors and no Half-Bloods, even if half of them were in Gryffindor.
"Narcissa," I said, looking him over. "I'm Sirius's cousin. Sirius, you can join Angela Stafford and I, if you'd like."
"No, I'd rather make my own friends, Cissa."
I nodded. "Just make the right friends... your parents would never forgive me if you made friends with future Hufflepuffs."
Sirius nodded, and James Potter started laughing. "I'm not a future Hufflepuff, Miss Narcissa. I'm not a Hufflepuff at all!"
Taking this to mean (mistakenly) that this boy was aiming for Slytherin, I thought it safe to leave he and Sirius together when looked down the corridor to see Angela waving me over.
"Sirius, and Mr. Potter, I'm going to go sit with Angela Stafford. I'll be sure to save you a spot at the table tonight."
Sirius nodded, grinning. "I'll be fine, Cissa, don't worry about me."
"If you're positive," I began. "Just find me if you need me, all right?"
"Of course," he agreed.
I flashed him a relieved smile before heading down the corridor to meet Angela. Halfway there, a first-year with greasy black hair ran into me, pulling the redheaded girl he was dragging along down with him.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," the girl apologised.
"It's fine," I said, helping myself up. "But next time, it won't be."
The girl looked at me with doe eyes, and the boy drew himself up to his full height. "Who are you to threaten her?!"
"I'm Narcissa Black, and from your attitude, I'm guessing you're either a blood traitor or a half-blood, filthy, either way."
"You're a Black?" he asked, his tone of voice changing from one of anger to one of awe.
"Of course I am! And you should know that messing with the Blacks gets you nothing but pain and misery for your troubles."
"Cissa! Are you scaring firsties again?"
I looked up from the greasy-haired boy to see Angela.
"This blasted blood-traitor-"
"I'm not a blood-traitor!" the boy yelled. "I'm a Prince! Eileen Prince is my mother!"
Angela looked at me, one eyebrow arched. "A Prince?"
"Yes," the boy seethed. "And who are you, a Malfoy?"
Angela laughed. "No, I'm a Stafford. Malfoys are tall, blonde, and pointy. Shouldn't you know that, Prince?"
"Sev, your last name isn't Prince," the girl said quietly.
Angela rolled her hazel eyes. "Look, I don't need this. Narcissa if you would please stop wasting energy on terrifying firsties, we could get some business done."
"Yes, you're quite right," I agreed. I shot a glare at the boy before leaving.
"I think that I need to burn these clothes," I muttered, following Angela to our compartment, which was empty. I shut the door quietly, as to not attract attention. "That boy had hair that can't have been washed in months. And I'll bet anything that the girl was a Mudblood; did you see the way she was staring in awe at everything? Absolutely infuriating. The filth they allow in this school."
"So why don't you go to Durmstrang?" Angela asked, smirking. She stretched her arms, yawned, and then spread herself across one of the plush benches.
"Father wouldn't let me." I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms before sitting next to the window, looking outside to see London whirring by. "Besides, I'd have to learn German and Russian on top of French and Greek."
"True, true," Angela said. I knew she was just letting me talk.
I inspected my dress and shrieked when I saw what looked like a stain.
"What is it, Narcissa?" Angela asked, not even getting up.
"That piece of filth got a stain on my dress!" I breathed deeply for a few seconds, trying to calm myself. It didn't work, so I grabbed my Slytherin robes from my trunk. "Angela, I'm going to go change into my robes and set fire to this dress."
I wasn't jesting; I had every intention to set fire to this dress.
"Don't burn it," Angela said, and I could hear in her voice that she was probably rolling her eyes. "Just get your Elf here and get it to clean it extremely well. There's no point in burning a nice dress unless it gets Mudblood blood on it."
She was making a lot of sense. "Certainly, you're right; I don't know why I was overreacting so. I'll change and then call my Elf over here."
"There's the Narcissa we all know and envy," she said, grinning. "If you run into Mr. Malfoy, tell him and maybe he can get the bit of filth a detention for some reason."
I grinned. Lucius Malfoy certainly would do that for me. "That's brilliant, Angela!"
"Of course it's brilliant, I'm Angela Stafford."
I giggled before going to get changed. Perhaps this year wouldn't be that bad.
A/N / Disclaimer: I only own Angela Stafford and Krilly the House-Elf so far. And I don't have my HP books readily available for cross-referencing, so if Lucius wasn't Head Boy... well he is in this story. And the Potters are, at this point at least, a respectable Pure-blood family. Gryffindors are frowned upon in the House of Black, but still... a Black did marry a Potter and didn't get burned off the family tree. And yes, everyone is their canon age here. Narcissa's quite a bit older than Sirius and Regulus, Andromeda's two years her senior, and Bellatrix is twenty-one at this point.