Chapter Text
“Damn it,” she hissed. Narcissa Malfoy slammed another tome onto the table, and a sharp thwack echoed through the Malfoys’ library. Scrolls, books, and ancient runic diagrams were littered everywhere across the room, some opened to pages she had already scoured three times. Every line, every notation, every archaic symbol felt like a taunt. Draco’s life was slipping through her fingers, and no amount of theory seemed fast enough to save him.
She was exhausted. Her magical force was drained from all the spells she had performed nonstop. Her once upright posture was now slouched; she could feel her ribs jutting against her dress and the grease marinating in her matted hair. She had spent too many restless nights in the library or beside Draco’s bed, searching for a cure as the curse slowly crept its way through her son’s veins.
The black veins that had started at the tips of Draco’s fingers and toes had now almost spread across his whole body, leaving only his heart untouched. She knew it was only a matter of time before the curse consumed that too.
Had she truly made the right choice? The question gnawed at her heart at every waking moment. Would the Dark Lord have known how to save her son? When she chose to betray the Dark Lord to help Harry Potter, she had done it with the expectation that Draco would get to live a better life, free from the chains of mad tyranny. Yet it had been three months since Lord Voldemort’s defeat, and her son remained bedridden, slowly dying from the curse placed upon him by her own sister.
Fuck Bellatrix. Fuck her. Freedom and happiness had been just within reach before they were ripped out of her hands by her sister moments before they were to be achieved. A bitter laugh escaped her lips. This was a haunting reflection of her life. Narcissa used to collect enchanted porcelain dolls. She treasured them with the utmost care, but Bellatrix would get her hands on them, shatter them to pieces, and throw them out. Morgana, her beautiful ragdoll cat, had been mutilated upon her bed by Bellatrix’s hands. Again and again, she took away everything Narcissa loved.
Anger boiled up, and before she knew it, she hurled her wand across the room. It flew, bouncing off shelves at rapid speed in random directions, white sparks flying from its end. “Shit!” Narcissa swore as she ducked under the table. First rule of wand holding: don’t throw your fucking wand at anything.
She stayed there cowering for about five minutes while her wand took multiple laps around the room, knocking books and objects off the shelves until it finally came to rest in the bottom corner of a bookcase. She crawled out and moved toward it. As her hand reached to grab it, a tattered black book caught her eye.
It lay horizontally atop a row of upright books, placed in such an unassuming position that no one would have noticed it without bending all the way to the ground. The cover was made from black, scaly leather, but it was not ordinary leather. It seemed almost alive. The leather pulsed under her fingers, like the faint pulse of veins. It was almost as though the book had waited, patiently, for the right blood to awaken it. A strange magic, an old unfamiliar one seemed to seep out of it. Red letters were scrawled across it in a script that seemed to writhe slightly as she spelled it out: Sanguinem Arcanum.
“The secret of blood,” she whispered. A shiver ran down her spine. The air around the book seemed to ring, urging her to open it. As if guided by some invisible force, she lifted the cover. Her fingers ran along the contents, then stopped.
The last chapter made her pulse quicken, and her fingers scurried to its page. Blood Cleansing. The paper was thin and almost translucent, filled with diagrams interlaced with runes and instructions scrawled in an unfamiliar, jagged hand. A faint warmth emanated from the text, as if it pulsed with some hidden life of its own.
A large circular diagram spanned both pages, drawn in dark ink that bled slightly through the parchment. A perfect ring bordered with tightly packed runes she could not recognize enclosed smaller intersecting circles that formed a symmetrical pattern. All the lines within the diagram connected at the very center where a red circle laid. She knew what it meant.
In the corner of the page, text was written:
Blood offered to flame does not burn. It transforms.
Fire consumes impurity; blood names the vessel.
Where the pure touches the stained,
there the fire discerns.
What is marked may be unmade.The curse must be drawn, not cut away. That which clings to flesh resists force but yields to sacrifice. Blood given willingly binds the fire to purpose. Without will, the flame devours indiscriminately.
She frowned and turned the page, searching for clarification. Two diagrams filled the space. Nothing elaborate, just forearms. The first illustration showed an arm extended palm up. A thin line ran along the inside of the forearm, inked in dark red pigment. Beside the picture, in small script, it read tainted. Tiny runes were etched around the incision line. The second illustration mirrored the first, but its label read untainted. She could not fully read the runes. From her limited knowledge she recognized fragments, but the full phrasing escaped her.
Underneath the arms, the text shifted into a structured column. The handwriting here was steadier and deliberate, as though the scribe had taken particular care with these words.
Sanguis meus igni offertur.
Maledictum solve, vinculum rumpe.
Quod corruptum est, igne purgetur.
Nomen eius servo; pretium fero.
Narcissa leaned closer, translating the Latin slowly. Thank the gods for her pure-blood education.
My blood is offered to the fire.
Release the curse, break its bond.
What is corrupted, let it be cleansed by flame.
I preserve his name; I bear the cost.
She closed the book gently. A heavy breath escaped her, and she ran toward the sound of Draco’s weak coughs. Her throat tightened. Desperation rose. Her heart raced. There were no reassurances, no promises of safety. Only vague instructions and a risk she was willing to take.