A Rose By Any Other Name

Chapter 4

Time had passed for Narcissa. She was now 7 and 1/2 months pregnant and was finally home alone. Lucius was out on business at the ministry and Lucius finally had decided he trusted his wife and left her sleeping instead of cursing her or drugging her.

She woke up around 9am and felt an uneasy feeling in her abdomen. Not just because of the child she was carrying but almost a sense of impending doom. This must be what it's like for the troops during ww1. Waiting.... waiting....

But nothing happens

She crawled out of bed and rushed as fast as her weak deprived legs could carry her to the master bathroom, adjacent from their bedroom, to be sick. This had happened often in the first few months of pregnancy but it had died down after around 3 months but even after emptying the contents of her now empty stomach into the porcelain toilet bowl, she couldn't shake off that horrible feeling she felt inside herself. She stood up and lightly tiptoed towards the mirror to compose herself. Staring at the reflection from the grass, tears crept down her snowlike face as she looked herself up and down looking for signs of herself.

Her baby wasn't even showing, just looking like Narcissa had a very toned stomach.

She reached for the handle of the bathroom cabinet to get an aspirin for her head. She had to resort to muggle alternatives as most of the spells and potions to cure minor things such as headaches or sickness were too dangerous during pregnancy and even though Narcissa didn't know how to feel about the child, she certainly didn't want to harm it. Like when when she had Draco; she had started to love this baby.

But when she opened the cupboard, she spotted the drugs she had been prescribed for for when she had trouble sleeping. Without taking her eyes off of herself, Narcissa opened the bottle and emptied it's contents into her long, boney hands. She chucked them all at her throat, chocking as she slipped to the floor. They tasted bitter, like wormwood. There was no thought process here. No sort of dramatic monologue li,e you seen in the films or plays. The thoughts

"This could kill me !"

Or

"What am I leaving behind ?"

Never had it crossed her mind that as the pills dropped into her empty stomach cavity, she would be killing her child as well as herself. An overwhelming wave of nausea hit her but she just put it down to taking the pills on a now empty stomach, not because she had just basically overdosed on extremely strong sleeping pills that would knock her out for a good 12 hours per tablet. What sort of effect would taking over 20 do ?

She was overcome with a feeling of deep slumber and serenity. It was as if she was now at peace with everything: the world, her problems, Lucius. The bottle dropped from her hand onto the floor, making a crashing sound as the remaining pills scattered to the four winds. As the bottle cracked, so did her skull. It smacked against the sharp marble due of the jacuzzi style bathtub and now her pristine pearly white bathroom tiles were being tainted by the pools of plasma and blood. It expelled slowly out of the gap in her skull, even trickling out of her ear canal, like a tributary of a lonesome river.

Narcissa could now only feel the ghastly yet efficacious effects of the pills that were now starting to slowly wrap there cold gnarly hands around her blood vessels. Constricting them and sucking the life out of her.

She tried to focus on something else, something but the immense pain she felt in life and now in death. As her eyelids began to shut, so did her organs.

The last thing she heard was the door bang shut before she slowly slipped away ....