Title: A Thousand Tiny Sighs
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Narcissa Malfoy
Rating: G
Word Count: 419
Warnings: ...baby?
Summary: Narcissa listens closely.
Author's Note: That one.
A THOUSAND TINY SIGHS
Narcissa Malfoy had bought a baby monitor.
Of course, she hadn’t actually gone out and bought it-dear Lord, no; that would require mingling with Muggles. The thought had flitted, dove-like, through her mind, and she’d shuddered something awful. No, she had sent someone. But that didn’t entirely erase the strange feeling that accompanied it-using it, prepping it, leaving it there in the nursery. What if it broke? What if it failed? What if it sprouted fangs and ate him?
It ran on batteries (which were odd, cylindrical things that seemed to have some sort of power inherent in them), and it made strange static-y noises like a radio. But beyond that, beneath the static, she could hear the low, soft, beautiful regularity of little breaths drawn and released, like a thousand tiny sighs. Sometimes, she listened for hours while her husband slept just inches away. She watched the speaker, with its web of crossing wires, a sightless insect eye peering through the gray dimness of the room, and revered its whispers as they trickled into her waiting ears.
Draco was everything.
Lucius she venerated, yes, but veneration was something different than love. She loved Draco-loved him with a wholeness and a deep, resonating power she hadn’t known was in her. She had loved him since she first felt him, loved him more when first he moved, loved him more still every time he kicked against her waiting palm. She loved the miniature fingers and toes and eyelashes and ears that she conjured with incredible clarity in her mind, loved the fragile heartbeat she thought she could hear, loved the almost primeval connection they shared.
And when Draco came, he didn’t disappoint. He was a miracle, an angel, a cherub. And he was hers. He encapsulated part of her and part of Lucius, combining what she was with what she worshiped. They existed together now, as one. They were accessible. They were Draco.
He could do no wrong-but the world could wrong him, and that was why she’d bought a baby monitor.
Well, she hadn’t physically. But she had it, now, and she no longer had to spend nights lying silently, straining to differentiate the creaks of the house from the cries of her child. She couldn’t bear to see him cry-to see him in pain. It killed her inside, one whimper at a time.
But when he smiled, that wondrous, guileless, toothless little grin, she knew, somehow, that everything would end up all right.