Chapter Text
The Hunter’s Moon was fat in the sky, and Narcissa was ready. As she slipped into the corridor, though, she almost collided with a House Elf. It stared at her with frightened eyes, glancing between the youngest Black daughter and her unlocked bedroom door.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t…”
The creature blinked slowly, then turned to continue its long walk back down to the kitchens in silence. Quietly, desperately, she followed in its wake, her cloak billowing like a shadow torn loose. Her feet were bare; her shoes stowed neatly in the bag she’d slung over her shoulder, along with her mirror, her precious books, and a pitifully small bag of galleon.
Her wand, however, was still locked in the family vault. She felt naked without it, but not enough that she was willing to risk her one and only chance of escape. Perhaps, someday, she might find another.
The Elf padded to the kitchen door – the one that led to the gardens – and opened it wordlessly with the ornate key around its neck. Then, it crawled into its nest of blankets beside the oven, and turned its back on her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, wondering how badly the creature would be punished for this. “You could… do you want me to free you?”
The Elf didn’t move, and Narcissa’s eyes flickered towards the clock. She only had a few minutes before midnight; the single moment each night when Black wards shifted, shimmered, and changed hands between old magic and new. Pulling her cloak up over her hair, she stepped out onto the step, fixed her eyes on the horizon, and ran.
Her feet bleeding on the stones, heart burning in her chest, she forced herself to keep moving. The edges of her mind tried to catch; parchment laid out under crystal, Lucius’s neat hand already signed, the clauses discussed over tea as if they were weather. Heirs. Observance. Obedience. A life sealed so tightly there was no room to breathe inside it. She stumbled, breath hitching, and shoved the thought away with all the force she had left. There was no future in that house she could survive.
The gate loomed ahead of her, the black iron slick with moonlight, and for half a heartbeat, nothing changed. The wards did not shimmer or soften. Before panic took hold of her, though, the magic sighed, ancient and reluctant, and slipped aside so that she could see the wolf waiting on the other side.
***
Massive, silver-shot, with eyes like molten gold, he knelt the moment he saw her. And Narcissa didn’t hesitate, not for one second. She didn’t even break her stride, pulling herself up and over the gate, half-sobbing as she tumbled to the floor on the other side.
The wolf rose at once, stepping between her and the gate, vast and solid. His nose brushed her wrist, breath warm against her skin, inhaling deeply – fear, blood, salt – and he stilled. A low sound thrummed through his chest; not a growl but something steadier. Narcissa stopped trembling, and her breath found rhythm again under his watchful gaze.
The wolf remained in place, head low, until she reached her fingers out tentatively to bury them in his fur.
“Remus,” she whispered, and the beautiful creature – Merlin, she hadn't expected him to be so beautiful – leaned into her hand as if he’d been starved of her touch. She climbed onto his back carefully, the moon crowning them both in cold fire. “Run.”
And they were gone, vanishing into the night like a story that refused to end in tragedy.