![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
materfamilias[When the Forge begins to broadcast, there is no accidental audio, no strange string of letters as the user smashes an unpracticed hand across the keypad. The video activates to show a relatively well-groomed woman, possibly in her late thirties or early forties. She would be quite pretty, indeed, if not for the look of hauteur and barely-concealed distaste.
Narcissa will never admit to a living soul just how quickly she learned to use a piece of Muggle technology. It isn't a source of pride; in fact, it's quite humiliating, but alas, a necessary evil.
She hasn't quite reconciled that necessary evil with personal sentiment.
If it weren't for her sense of indignation at both her abduction and the necessity of Muggle rubbish, she might not be as collected as she seems now, a fact which is given credence by the details gone unnoticed at first glance. The faint shadows about her eyes. A leanness which is less fashionable and instead one borne of stress. The way the Forge shakes slightly if she doesn't hold it in both hands.
For all that, her tone is as cold as ice.]
I can only assume that my abductor is listening. Perhaps even that is too much to ask, if this is just some elaborate...prank.
[Distaste becomes blatant disgust with that last word.]
Obviously, you have no idea who I am or the severity of the mistake you've made.
[Perhaps it isn't threatening to be a Malfoy any longer, but this isn't just any Malfoy, after all.]
Narcissa will never admit to a living soul just how quickly she learned to use a piece of Muggle technology. It isn't a source of pride; in fact, it's quite humiliating, but alas, a necessary evil.
She hasn't quite reconciled that necessary evil with personal sentiment.
If it weren't for her sense of indignation at both her abduction and the necessity of Muggle rubbish, she might not be as collected as she seems now, a fact which is given credence by the details gone unnoticed at first glance. The faint shadows about her eyes. A leanness which is less fashionable and instead one borne of stress. The way the Forge shakes slightly if she doesn't hold it in both hands.
For all that, her tone is as cold as ice.]
I can only assume that my abductor is listening. Perhaps even that is too much to ask, if this is just some elaborate...prank.
[Distaste becomes blatant disgust with that last word.]
Obviously, you have no idea who I am or the severity of the mistake you've made.
[Perhaps it isn't threatening to be a Malfoy any longer, but this isn't just any Malfoy, after all.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 11:17 am (UTC)I assure you, my dear - I am listening. I heard every word. But any discussion of my mistakes can surely wait for morning.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 11:32 am (UTC)For a beat or two, she simply stares in dumbfounded silence before biting out sharply:]
Lucius.
[She won't make her pleas for rescue in such a public manner, but surely he can judge for himself that she is in need of it. Once he's awake.
After all, her wand is currently Merlin-knows-where; Apparating isn't an option any more than is hexing her still-absent abductor.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 11:51 am (UTC)Narcissa? [There is disbelief in his tone, despite the seeming evidence of his eyes. It wouldn't be the first time the Mist had played tricks, after all. Best to be certain.] Where are you?
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 12:06 pm (UTC)The question diverts her attention, however, and she raises her eyes from the Forge to glance around the pitiable little flat in which she's been sequestered. Opening her mouth, she finds that there simply are no words, then, coming to a solution, raises the device and pans the camera slowly around the room.
When it returns to its starting point, she skips right over the prologue to the most obvious (and important) question:]
Is Draco with you?
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 12:28 pm (UTC)Draco... [She would ask that straight away.] He is not. He was, when I first arrived, but he's since been returned home. [Presumably.] What is the last thing you remember?
Video - Assuming she came in from the week after the Battle of Hogwarts.
Date: 2012-08-30 01:04 pm (UTC)The look of dubious uncertainty doesn't fade as she turns her head slightly, eyes on his image until the last moment: she fixates on a point on the far wall in her attempt to remember where she was last.]
...Home.
[And isn't that an uncertain word. She says it slowly, as though it's something foreign on her tongue.]
I was- [Going to bed. Alone.] - retiring for the evening. I remember lying in bed.
[There is clearly more to her tale; some, she simply expects him to remember, while some of it occurred in the privacy of her room, where propriety and a firm grasp of self-control were not at all required.
If those are things which occur behind closed doors, then she certainly will not broadcast the perceived shambles of her marriage or a night spent sobbing into a pillow on a Muggle recording device. With a shake of her head, she dismisses the rest of what passed with:]
I must have fallen asleep. I awoke in this...room.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 01:18 pm (UTC)Sorry, I'm not being entirely clear. [Blame the interrupted sleep.] What is the date? What year is it?
[It is suddenly desperately important to him, that they both be on the same page, as it were. That she is not from a time period other than his own. That she has gone through the same events as he, before being snatched away.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 02:18 pm (UTC)What year?
[That was almost a laugh. A miserable one, true, and thoroughly bemused, but still a laugh. It evaporates into another silence. Uneasily, she ventures:]
Lucius...
[She flounders, then falls silent. Would he ask that if it wasn't important, if only to him?]
The fifth of May.
[Another pause.]
Nineteen ninety-eight.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 03:14 pm (UTC)You think it an odd question, doubtlessly. When Draco was here, for him it was March of that same year, the last he remembered. For Andromeda's daughter, who is also here, it is nineteen ninety-five.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 03:22 pm (UTC)[How can he look so relieved? How? He sounds mad!]
Andromeda's...
You're making no sense at all! Where is here?
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 03:54 pm (UTC)I take it you did not read the 'helpful' brochure. You were not far off when you referred to this as an abduction, in that many people have been brought to this place unwillingly. We are in a city called Anatole, which is part of a greater world called the Sphere. Which is not, unfortunately, a fanciful name for Earth. It appears to be quite outside of time as we know it. The phrase that is coined here most often is 'alternate universe.' Not that it's really much of an explanation, I know.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 04:39 pm (UTC)The silence stretches out as she reads what's printed within, the Forge at her side, capturing imagery of the floor, her shoe, and part of her robes.
Finally, she remembers Lucius is waiting and brings the device back up to eye-level. In the short interlude, she has grown quite pale; though her tone is steady, it's quieter and far less self-assured.]
What-
[She pauses, pursing her lips and closing her eyes, breathes deeply before continuing:]
What name did you wish to give our son?
[It's a pitiable attempt to take control of the situation, with a far more pathetic tactic: use of those laughable Ministry safety measures. She doesn't believe this is happening, and therefore...Lucius might not be Lucius.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 05:46 pm (UTC)I beg your pardon?
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 05:55 pm (UTC)I found myself in a strange room, hearing stranger tales of...alternate universes and Mist - [She holds up the pamphlet for emphasis.]
You tell me Draco was here, but I saw him only yesterday.
[She stops and forces herself to take a steadying breath.]
Please.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 06:10 pm (UTC)Video
Date: 2012-08-30 06:32 pm (UTC)[She echoes the words disbelievingly, unable to fully grasp the idea that he has been in this place (the existence of which she doubts) for three months, when yes, she saw him yesterday.
Sinking down into one of the chairs at the table, she stares at the image of her husband, searching his appearance for evidence of his assertions.
It takes only a moment for sympathy to stir in her: she remembers quite vividly how a years' imprisonment affected him. Giving the benefit of the doubt at least to his belief that he has been in a wholly different world for three months, without hope of seeing his family again...yes, she feels pity for him.
Then again, perhaps he hasn't missed her at all. Perhaps this supposed separation has been a welcome thing.
Perhaps he isn't Lucius at all. He hasn't answered her, unseemly as it was to ask a security question of the man to whom she has been married for twenty years.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 07:08 pm (UTC)He sighs and smiles just a tiny bit, as if what ensues is something of a private joke between them.] Would you still remind me after all this time, what a personal triumph for you it had been to have me relent to Draco rather than Nicholas?
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 07:35 pm (UTC)It doesn't occur to her immediately that it might, in fact, be her presence, because it is unthinkable that he would be happy to see his wife stolen away to Anatole.
Whatever the case, her relief at his answer elicits a smile of her own, faint though it is.]
I would never gloat. It's dreadfully unbecoming.
[Here, her smile falters, then fades entirely.]
This is truly happening? I haven't...
[Gone mad?]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 08:08 pm (UTC)It is quite real. Unfortunately. Although as far as I've heard, it has little effect on actual reality. In other words, it changes nothing about our lives in our own world.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 08:17 pm (UTC)[It isn't chiding; she's simply musing to herself, speaking aloud to keep her distress at bay.
Suddenly, she meets his eyes as a thought occurs to her; now she is distressed.]
I don't -
[It wouldn't do to announce that over the Forge, though. She hesitates, then continues pointedly:]
I am at a disadvantage.
[A search of her person has turned up no evidence of a wand.]
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 08:57 pm (UTC)[Like she hasn't missed him these last three months.]
As soon as you become more familiar—
[He breaks off as he realises to what she's referring.]
It is not as much of an immediate concern as you may think.
Video
Date: 2012-08-30 09:24 pm (UTC)As well he should know, she thinks. Then again, these past few years have been...chaotic.
She isn't sure what's worse: longing for someone who has been forcibly ripped away to another world, or for someone who is only in the other room, but might as well be thousands of miles away.
The wand, then, is her focus for now. She doesn't like his response, but she trusts him; he has more of an understanding of this place than she.]
You mentioned Andromeda's child. [A beat.] Nymphadora. Is it only the three of us? Are there others?
[She almost doesn't want to know. There are some names she would prefer not to hear, starting with Bellatrix and ending with Voldemort.]
private video
Date: 2012-08-31 12:25 pm (UTC)I have adjusted this device so that we may speak freely without fear of being overheard on the network. [He pauses briefly.] Bella is here.
private video
Date: 2012-08-31 12:33 pm (UTC)More to the point, she's thinking about the fact that Bellatrix is dead - and so is Nymphadora, isn't she? Yes, Bellatrix killed her three days ago. Nymphadora and Bellatrix, Severus, Crabbe's boy and that dreadful Scabior, one of those Weasley twins - fifty people all told, all still being identified. People she knew. People she didn't know.
She doesn't feel anything. Draco and Lucius survived.
Except. Bellatrix is here, and so is Nymphadora, and now, so is Narcissa.]
Are we dead?
private video
Date: 2012-08-31 12:51 pm (UTC)Although [another pause] she is aware of our... duplicity. [And then, hurriedly-] No one has heard from her for quite some time, though. She disappeared into the Mist a few months ago, and with any luck, she won't come back.
private video
Date: 2012-08-31 01:13 pm (UTC)She does, of course, ponder the reference to her own duplicity as "ours"; she supposes it is, after a fashion. They are married, after all, and bound to share in all things until death did they part.
Funny, though. It's nice to have that small reassurance that her husband is her ally, after all.]
And...the Dark Lord...?
[Isn't here, she hopes.]