REVISED
Title: "Lemon Juice" from Stories from the Inside
Summary: Narcissa always smelled like lemon juice.
Rating: PG
Pairing: N/A
Warnings: N/A
A/N: I spent most of Thanksgiving Break practically shooting lemon juice for my throat. This came out of that. Plus I'm really random. Perhaps you have to be a vocalist to understand. I've revised this, mostly gramatical things, and am using it to start a chaperfic type thing about the Black family. Yay.
Narcissa always smelled like lemon juice.
Not lemons. Never like lemons. Like the lemon juice that comes in a bottle that really doesn’t taste like lemons at all. It tastes like tart and sharp and acid. Lemons are good and wholesome. Lemon juice seems a little sickly. It’s always dim and clouded. It reminds me distinctly of spit.
It didn’t come to me for a long time; I don’t know why. Narcissa was forever going through bottles of the stuff. She’d pour it on her hair in the summer before she’d go out to play with Bella and me. I suppose she never could be blonde enough to suit herself, or rather, to suit Lucius. She put it in everything she drank, too. Narci liked to pretend it was because she was “cultivating the voice.” I always thought she sounded exactly like a scalded cat. The real reason was that it kept her thin; it kept all her water weight off. The lemon juice, I guess, made her just what she wanted to be: emaciated and beautiful, hardly real at all.
I didn’t realize it until the last time I saw her, which always struck me as funny. How did I spend 18 years with her and never notice? Sirius and I had just graduated. I had cut off my long hair of which Mother was so fond, started wearing lots of black leather, and bought a motorbike. I think Sirius got it eventually. Mother and I had had a fight. I was profaning the family honor or something like that. According to her, I was always profaning the family honor. I was in my room, packing to run off with Ted. It’s a special art, packing. The trick is getting the socks to fold just right. The rest just follows. So I was doing my little packing trick, cursing my mother and the whole damn Black family to every ill fate that popped into my head.
She flounced in, having just come in from sitting out with that stuff in her hair. She didn’t say a word to me, just turned up her prim little nose, glared, and pranced out. That was when it hit me. Narcissa had become lemon juice. Dim. Artificial. Tart. She was nothing but a pretty face and an odor of that bloody lemon juice that I hated so much.
I laughed all the way out of the house that day, laughed all the way out of that stuffy pureblood world. Sometimes I feel sorry for her. She used to be so lovely, back when she was real. I wonder if Narci’s still caught in the web, if she still reeks of artifice.
Somehow, I think it would surprise me if she didn’t.
Summary: Narcissa always smelled like lemon juice.
Rating: PG
Pairing: N/A
Warnings: N/A
A/N: I spent most of Thanksgiving Break practically shooting lemon juice for my throat. This came out of that. Plus I'm really random. Perhaps you have to be a vocalist to understand. I've revised this, mostly gramatical things, and am using it to start a chaperfic type thing about the Black family. Yay.
Narcissa always smelled like lemon juice.
Not lemons. Never like lemons. Like the lemon juice that comes in a bottle that really doesn’t taste like lemons at all. It tastes like tart and sharp and acid. Lemons are good and wholesome. Lemon juice seems a little sickly. It’s always dim and clouded. It reminds me distinctly of spit.
It didn’t come to me for a long time; I don’t know why. Narcissa was forever going through bottles of the stuff. She’d pour it on her hair in the summer before she’d go out to play with Bella and me. I suppose she never could be blonde enough to suit herself, or rather, to suit Lucius. She put it in everything she drank, too. Narci liked to pretend it was because she was “cultivating the voice.” I always thought she sounded exactly like a scalded cat. The real reason was that it kept her thin; it kept all her water weight off. The lemon juice, I guess, made her just what she wanted to be: emaciated and beautiful, hardly real at all.
I didn’t realize it until the last time I saw her, which always struck me as funny. How did I spend 18 years with her and never notice? Sirius and I had just graduated. I had cut off my long hair of which Mother was so fond, started wearing lots of black leather, and bought a motorbike. I think Sirius got it eventually. Mother and I had had a fight. I was profaning the family honor or something like that. According to her, I was always profaning the family honor. I was in my room, packing to run off with Ted. It’s a special art, packing. The trick is getting the socks to fold just right. The rest just follows. So I was doing my little packing trick, cursing my mother and the whole damn Black family to every ill fate that popped into my head.
She flounced in, having just come in from sitting out with that stuff in her hair. She didn’t say a word to me, just turned up her prim little nose, glared, and pranced out. That was when it hit me. Narcissa had become lemon juice. Dim. Artificial. Tart. She was nothing but a pretty face and an odor of that bloody lemon juice that I hated so much.
I laughed all the way out of the house that day, laughed all the way out of that stuffy pureblood world. Sometimes I feel sorry for her. She used to be so lovely, back when she was real. I wonder if Narci’s still caught in the web, if she still reeks of artifice.
Somehow, I think it would surprise me if she didn’t.