"Nymphadora! Get out of that tree right now."
Narcissa watched as her older sister rebuked her daughter, her child. What was it that the mudblood loving Andy had done correct, that she had not? What was that she had failed at that she was not getting the joy of being a mother?
"Mum, don't call me that!" Young Dora screamed back, her short dark hair turning into a fiery red to match her temper and her blue eyes turned crimson. Narcissa watched from the shadows, fascinated, as her niece changed. She could not see the look on her sister's face, but she knew the tense posture of her sibling. How well she knew that stance! Meda had used that stance to scare Bella and her as children. She had been more of a mother to them, than that hag who they grew up around who could only harp about blood purity and the diseases carried by mudbloods. Narcissa doubted that her mother even knew she had three children anymore, with the way she had erased Andy's presence in their house, a place she had only visited sparingly since her marriage.
"Da!" The sound of her niece, to think she was an Aunt for four years till now and had never gotten to visit the child- what had Andy seen in that muggle that her sisters could not provide? Why did she break all ties with Andy when the older tried to be a part of both families? Shaking her head at her sentimental thoughts, Andromeda was wrong and no sister of hers.. That brat was not her niece and she, unlike that muggle lover, would marry into the polite pureblood Malfoy family and never think on this day when she crumpled again. That woman had chosen her side and she would choose hers.
As the blonde metamorphagus turned to leave, she heard a child cry out and could not help but turn, as she saw her niece crying on the leafy floor, fat tears pooling out of her eyes. Narcissa held back as she watched her sister and the muggle hush the child before Meda healed what was probably a broken wrist- thank god for momentum charms, if the kid had fallen from such a height without the charms Meda surely had cast, then the child would probably be dead by now. How had she managed to get up that high in the first place? Accidental magic, perhaps. She watched from the shadows, as her brave niece- the girl had to be brave if she was not bawling after the fall and the pain of having bones reset- even potions could do only so much- was up and about in a few minutes, the two parents alert and watching for when the potions would kick in and their charge would go off to sleep. She sneered when the muggle lifted her niece in his filthy arms and carried her inside as her hair changed into a dark brown that reminded her of both Bella and Meda.
"How much could I have taught you, child, if your mother had not chosen an animal over family," Narcissa commented, changing the only body part she could- her hair- to a dark black and sneaking away into the shadows. Her heart ached for a child and for the niece she would never truly know, but this was a war and her allegiance lay with her family, not dirty animals who did not deserve to live among them as equals, even if the mother and sister hurt with every step she took.
Maybe, she thought, once she reached home, Lucius was still serving his lord, maybe once the girl grows up, her choices will be different, maybe she would not love animals like her mother did, after all she was a Black and a powerful one at that and maybe, just maybe, Narcissa could be an Aunt.
Nymphadora Tonks had married Remus Lupin.
Her niece, her niece had married that that beast!
Filthy animal, half breed!
Narcissa's thoughts screamed at her, but a tiny voice, more powerful was whispering the things it had been whispering for the past year in her ears, turning her against the ideals she had given up so much for, the ideals she had lost her sister- no sisters, Bella was no more than a ravaging lunatic husk of the girl she used to be now- for, the ideas that had almost cost her husband's sanity, her son's life and his innocence. The ideas she no longer could say she valued, the Lord, she was not sure anymore about. How could a good leader sentence a child for the sins of the parent?
She was not sure any longer if she could support the Dark Lord and yet she felt she had to because how could something she had followed her entire life be wrong? But how could something that endangered her baby be right? Narcissa was torn and her heart ached, because she could be a pure blood anymore with these thoughts, she could not be a Malfoy or a true Black. She could never be an Aunt. Narcissa Malfoy felt like crying, she could not even be herself anymore and yet she knew, no matter what, she could always be a mother, she thought determined and took all the courage she had as Gryffindor as that sounded and got up. She would always save her baby, her Draco, even if she had to stand against the Dark Lord and every pure blood for it. She would do it. She would not betray them, never, unless.…Unless it was Draco in danger.
Narcissa Malfoy nee Black had been a mother since the day she had first felt Darco kick and realized she had a baby in her womb and she had many times chosen her son over the world, as selfish as it was, but it was when she lied about Harry Potter's death that she felt that she had done something right for once. Maybe she could not be an Aunt, she could not even be a sister or a pureblood or anything but she was a mother and nothing, nothing could take her son away from her. Not if she had anything to do with it.