The Boy With Black Eyes

Debts

"Cissy!"

"Cissy!"

"Cissy!"

Narcissa put her head in her hands, very nearly smudging the makeup Nox had spent almost an hour applying to her face. Nox was waving three brushes and her wand, teeth grinding together, praying nothing smudged. "Narcissa! Don't touch it yet!"

A knock on the door announced the moment before Severus stuck his head through the door, wearing a custom tailor set of black dress robes with a red tie, a white rose tucked in the buttonhole. "Nox - people are starting to arrive..."

"If they expect this wedding to start on time, then you need to get her sister and her mother out of here!" Nox had Narcissa's beautifully rounded jaw in her hand, adding the littlest bit of bronze to her friend's face. Catching Sev's eyes in the mirror they were kneeling in front of, she rolled honey-amber eyes and gave him a pleading glance, as they didn't have a bridezilla on their hands, it was Bellatrix making their lives difficult. "Please? I need to fix her hair too..." When she was done, her friend's mousy brown hair would be permanently turned to the same platinum blonde as Lucius's. And in order to show that off, it would have to be sleeked down very specifically, and the diamonds would have to be re-braided so they sat perfectly in her hair. Bellatrix would not be ruining this for her friend.

Sev escorted the mother of the bride and the other bridesmaid out into the hall, as well as a bunch of well-meaning family members that were only adding to the stress in the room.

Narcissa looked at Nox in the mirror and the look of anguish on her friend's face made Nox's heart sink, and she rapidly cast the charm against tears that ensured the magical powders would stay on her friend's face until she wanted them to move. "I don't think..."

"Don't even say it." Nox's lips got thin in the reflection of the mirror, her fingers unwinding the complex braid she'd put in her friend's hair about half an hour ago, before Bellatrix bounced in and messed everything up. "I have put too much of my time and patience into this event for you to get cold feet now."

"But Nox..."

"No buts." Nox turned her friend away from the mirror, and knelt down to her level, muttering the transfiguration spell that would make her friend a platinum blonde for the rest of her life. "You love him. He loves you. He is going to protect you and keep you safe." She turned her friend back to the mirror and Narcissa's bright blue eyes widened in her face, as Nox threaded diamond beads into an intricate braid that hung loosely over her shoulder, pinned precisely into place. Everything had been changed, her dark eyelashes lightened to a pale brown, unruly eyebrows now paler and in perfect place, and her hair turned from straight and frizzy and a mousey brown that would have impressed no-one, to wavy, smooth, effortless platinum. "And his colour suits you."

**********

Lucius was holding a jewelry box, standing just outside the door in which Nox had sequestered herself with Narcissa. He looked rather dapper, and had paid a pretty penny for the wedding. Whenever I would question a particularly large expenditure, he'd turn at me and make a face, before looking off into the distance and muttering something about what his father would have wanted.

Nox hadn't been the only one to loose a parent in the past few months. Abraxas had been struck suddenly, violently, with dragon pox several weeks before, right in the middle of our NEWTS.

The large door opened, and Nox slipped out, wearing her Bond Girl makeup again, eyes dark and lips fairly neutral. In her left hand, she was lifting up the hem of a long chiffon dress in a burgundy the colour of elderberries, revealing red velvet Mary Janes with white lace peeking out just around her toes. In her right hand were corsages for the wedding party, carried in a perilous-looking stack. Calla-lilies and small roses. Her long dark hair was tied back in a loose fishtail braid, threaded with garnets at the points where the strands met. "Sev, could you take those roses out of your button-hole and hunt down Rodolphus and Bellatrix?" She carefully set the clear boxes down, and fixed the corsage to my buttonhole, before turning and looking up at Lucius, offering to do the same. The blonde leaned down to let her fasten the boutanier before straightening again, still holding onto the jewelry box. Carefully, she brushed a few fallen strands of platinum off his shoulders.