ᴅɪsᴘᴇʟ ᴍʏ ʙᴏʀᴇᴅᴏᴍ | ᴍᴀʀᴀᴅᴇᴜʀs' ᴇʀᴀ

Chapter 53: Help from Unexpected Sources

It was dawning over the Malfoy Manor.

Lucius went down for breakfast, straightening his shirt cuffs as he went. His mother was already sitting at a long table laden with dishes, nodding favorably to the hustling house-elves, and in the meantime, she looked out of the window with a wistful look as if she was waiting for someone.

Next to Erica, Eliza was blossoming and blooming like never before. It seemed she was eagerly sucking the life out of Erica drop by drop. Recently, her features have become rougher, a little more aggressive. All the power that had laid in her for years lifted its head, scribbling Eliza's face with confident short strokes.

The way she smiled, turned her head, threw back a strand of hair from her forehead, and straightened the cuffs of a white jacket with thin fingers, caused fierce hatred in Lucius. He didn't want to admit Eliza's right to be in his house, but he couldn't do anything about it. In a strange way, Erica resembled a living person next to Eliza. She smiled, occasionally confused names and called her niece Hermina, but Eliza stubbornly pretended not to notice these slips of the tongue. As soon as Eliza left the room, Erica, like a drug addict without a dose, just faded away.

Narcissa almost ceased to appear in the living room since the evening Lucius told her about the Hunt. Sometimes she cautiously peeped out of her chambers to slip into the gardens, and there she indulged herself in her thoughts until the evening, sometimes forgetting even about lunch. But Narcissa was a big girl, and Lucius knew that she would cope with the truth and would never betray him.

"Mother," he nodded meekly. "Eliza." Lucius sank into the chair with the initials 'L.A.M.'. "How did you sleep, mother?" he asked, not waiting for an answer though.

Erica shrugged vaguely, looked back at Eliza and smiled. Lucius shuddered.

They had breakfast in complete silence under the sound of forks and careless tweets of birds. A few minutes later, Erica quietly rose from the table, not finishing her sandwich, and retired to the balcony.

Lucius and Eliza were left alone. For a while they ate or pretended that they did, not looking at each other and occasionally summoning house-elves. The tension was growing, and it was only a matter of time when one of them would explode.

Eliza couldn't stand it first.

"What are you waiting for, Lucius?" she asked with ill-disguised annoyance.

"Waiting?" said Lucius haughtily, his eyes glued to the plate.

"You're watching me so closely, with such malice you don't even try to hide... You're waiting for something, aren't you?"

Lucius squinted at her, stretched out his lips in a poisonous smile and said in a sweet voice, "Just waiting for you to realize that you're not welcome here."

Eliza narrowed her eyes. "I realized that once I entered here. Then your father was alive, and his spirit, which saturated the whole house, seemed to say: go away. It was very uncomfortable, Lucius. I felt myself not just a stranger, I was an uninvited thief who had illegally entered a house and wasn't even able to steal anything. But then I realized... This is how everything works in your world. To be in it, you have to defend your territory and stop at nothing."

"But this is not your territory," Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"I can be here by the right of blood."

Lucius burst out laughing so loud that the house-elves timidly pressed their long ears to their big heads. Lucius' laughter rang across the entire lower floor. Eliza looked at him as if he was mad. Malfoy's laugh broke off as abruptly as it had begun, and anger distorted his features.

"By the right of blood?" he hissed. Eliza felt a drop of saliva hitting her cheek. "Says a half-blood whose mother voluntarily married a muggle who has nothing to do with magic? Not even muggle-born, muggle!"

"Stop it, Lucius," Eliza's face reflected Lucius' face like a mirror. "No need to brand me with my mother's actions. I didn't ask her for such father and such a choice, she made it for me. Even before my birth! And now I think I may return."

Lucius smiled, his grey steel eyes flashing.

"How do you sleep at night, Eliza?" he quietly asked.

Eliza looked at him blankly for a moment, then started and moved away with the chair. The fork fell to the floor, but the house-elves did not even budge to lift it.

"You know about the potion?" Eliza breathed out.

"Of course, I know about the potion!" Lucius exclaimed.

"That I drank it?" Eliza stared at him in amazement.

They looked at each other for a moment. Terror on Eliza's face, understanding on Malfoy's.

"Did you drink the potion yourself?" he asked sharply.

"You poured it to me?" she whispered.

Silence again.

"Crazy bitch," Lucius hissed. "Even the potion didn't kill you..."

"Asshole! Wanted to get rid of me with my own medicine?!"

She jumped up, nearly knocking over a silver goblet with juice, hanging over the table like an angry white bird. Now she looked like Ernest Yaxley in the worst of his moods. The similarity was amazing, and Lucius once again thought all the Yaxleys, probably, were raised with the sole purpose of cutting and killing. Eliza's mother was very unexpected and, most likely, the only exception from the family.

Eliza stood there for half a minute, all tense, and flew out of the dining room, almost crashing into Narcissa Black. She backed away to the side, not uttering a word of apology, and disappeared into the doorway. The door slammed, then another one and everything was quiet.

Erica, who was standing on the balcony in her long dress and the warm shawl, didn't even flinch. Her figure, frozen against the background of the rising sun, seemed like a statue carved out of a rare multi-colored stone.

Heels tapped, there was a faint smell of perfume, and Narcissa flowed into the dining room. She walked confidently, but carefully, as if stepping across a field with magical traps ready to explode.

"I suppose the conversation wasn't pleasant," Narcissa inquired, stopping near the table and looking at pale Lucius.

Malfoy raised his eyes to her, feeling the beads of sweat gliding across his forehead, sighed loudly and jerked his head.

"I don't want to talk about this."

Lucius rose impetuously from the table, and walked to the twisted staircase, climbed it and disappeared into the gaping mouth of the second floor. Narcissa could only shrug. She expected something like that from these two and counted seconds before the onset of the storm.

The fact that Eliza voluntarily drank a potion... Narcissa didn't know what she felt — respect or fear of a person capable of such a thing. But she didn't want to be in the same house with Eliza anymore.

Narcissa sat down at the empty table, glanced at the future mother-in-law on the open balcony, and casually waved to the house-elves. No sooner had she smoothed the cloth napkin on her knees, as a barn owl flew into the window, sat down on the table and lowered its beak into Eliza's cup. After getting drunk enough, the owl approached Narcissa, stretching its paw with the envelope.

"Thank you," a short, crumpled letter said.

Narcissa turned the paper into ashes with a flick of a wand and sighed peacefully.

So, Lily Evans and all the Marauders were warned about the Hunt. Emily Parker will still have a chance to escape.

Narcissa closed her eyes. What will happen next? Anyway, she knew one thing - no matter what person Emily was and whatever she did to Lucius, she didn't deserve to be in the dungeons of Mulciber Manor. Narcissa knew firsthand what was happening there. She saw what he was doing with his toys and she considered it necessary to intervene.

Let's hope Remus Lupin was ready to do everything for Emily Parker, as he was saying.