Title: Old Friends

Fandom: BtVS/Harry Potter

Pairing: Ethan/Narcissa Malfoy

Summary: Because Christmas is a time for catching up with old friends.

Spoilers: None specific.

Disclaimer: Neither the characters or the original concepts of Harry Potter or Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to me. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Distribution: TTH. Anywhere else please ask first.

Feedback: Please.

Spread out on the large table before her were perhaps as many as a hundred different photos, dating from the days of her youth when she had been young and happy, draped on Lucius’s arm as the cool looking man gave a arrogant smile to more recent ones, photographs from parties that she and her husband had held, family events with Draco growing increasingly older throughout. They were fantastic memories, most relatively happy and enough to bring a smile to her thin lips as she leafed through them and discarded those that would not be chosen to be part of her immediate collection that Christmas, to be pulled out and shown around whenever a relative or friend got a little too tipsy and needed occupying.

The task was proving more difficult than she had expected. Six months ago had she been given the task then Narcissa would easily have known which could be safely kept and which should be hidden away, the friendships and acquaintances present in each and every shot each being potentially dangerous to her precarious position depending on who happened to see them. A lot had changed in the last six months. The meteoric re-emergence of Lord Voldemort, the horrifyingly brief war that had raged before the Potter’s child had finally grown into his own skin enough to have the bravery to kill the Dark Lord, Lucius’s subsequent imprisonment and Draco’s desertion of her when he had discovered that she was not going to turn into a bawling wreck of tears and exhaustion simply because her husband had gone… All had flown by, leading to the point where she was now; seated at a table in the middle of her apartments within Malfoy Manor with nothing but her memories for company.

Biting her lip she peered down at the last photograph that she had picked up. Ethan… Whatever had happened to the man? When they had been younger he had always been there - evidence of the fact dusting the photographs before her now. Ethan was like a fading stain that refused to disappear completely.

He’d never been the most attractive man, Lucius had always had that honour, but he had been a fairly good-looking sort of fellow and Narcissa could easily remember the lingering looks he used to give her and which she daringly – when she was certain her husband had not been around – had returned. Then there had been the touches… the brief touches and that one Christmas they had spent together when Lucius had been away on business and she, massively pregnant with her baby boy and emotional as a consequence, had been feeling the distance between herself and her closest friend who just happened to be her husband.

A brief smile darted onto her features, curving her lips, lighting her cheeks with a rosy glow of remembrance and making her cool eyes sparkle.

Her ankles had been swollen, her face ruddy with the ‘glow’ that Draco’s presence within her had caused and her stomach so large that Narcissa had often wondered whether she wasn’t carrying two, or three, or perhaps even four children within her instead of the one it had turned out to be. And Ethan, he had been a spry, whippet-like figure, reeling from the desertion of his own lover – a rather priggish man if she remembered rightly who had run away to join one mystical order or another – and on the spur of the moment while she had been feeling particularly bitter about the fact that Lucius had to be away and when she had been feeling sorry for the sandy-haired wizard Narcissa had invited the man to spend Christmas day with her. She was certain that they had made an amusing picture; the only two people seated at the enormous ancestral dinning table and then Ethan had suggested that they abandon conformity – something that had not been surprising in the least – and they had settled themselves down in the living-room before a huge fire with a makeshift picnic of elaborate food.

Ethan had drunk too much, his face gradually turning redder and redder and he slumped sideways to lean his head on her shoulder with a wine glass clutched in one hand. But even with his inebriated state the man was capable of being charming and Narcissa found herself easily lulled by the warmth of the room and the sound of his voice into talking freely with him. So talented he was at ingratiating himself with people, even with his occasionally rude and brash manner, that Narcissa had long considered Ethan a friend and that Christmas only led to her considering him more of a friend, a companion for those long hours when she couldn’t be near her husband and as odd as it seemed now, looking back in retrospect to the man who had proved himself as unreliable as he had, the sheer friendliness and loyalty that she had always felt towards Ethan was stirred.

The smile on her face widened. Happy memories had been rare the past few months with the war and all that it Narcissa had been certain that it would begin and so as the blonde matriarch of the Malfoy family peered down at the smiling image of herself and a scruffy, cheeky and rebellious looking man she was struck all the more forcefully by the surety that even with Lucius away it had been one of the pleasantest Christmas’ that she had ever spent.

Whatever had happened to Ethan anyway? The last she had heard he had been headed over to America but after that there had been nothing except a few whisperings that he had managed to get himself into a bit of a mess. After than there had been nothing though…

Sitting back she grasped the photograph in long fingers, watching as the two figures inclined their heads together and Ethan whispered something into the image of herself their. The Narcissa in the picture instantly threw her head back and laughed out loud and the sight of her doing so left the older Narcissa sitting in the seclusion of her rooms tipping her head to one side and coming to a decision.

There couldn’t be any harm is trying to relive a few happy memories and she was certain that some of Lucius’ old friends would help her out. Finding out what had happened to Ethan would be project enough to occupy her mind at least for a little while and Christmas was, after all, meant for catching up with old friends.

THE END