A/N: Written for the Snakes and Ladders Challenge (which gave me the character) and the Of Blank and Blank Competition (which gave me the title). I am not JKR and don't own the characters.
Watching blonde hair fade to gray was such a subtle process, but recently it seemed to have picked up speed. The differences between blonde and gray were minute, but she noticed, and felt the grayness overtake her head like some kind of sadness. There was no Lucius beside her now, though she sometimes felt him, like a ghost, like a whisper, and it raised the hairs on her neck. She tried to pretend like everything was still the same. Pretending was a game she had mastered. She had done it for years.
She looked in her ornate mirror to paint on makeup, to hide the wrinkles that were beginning to creep onto her face. My sister is dead, she thought as she painted her lips. My brother-in-law is dead, she thought as she added mascara to her long lashes, and though she never knew him as such, it hurt some. They died for opposite sides of a war. One sister unashamedly fighting for Dumbledore, the other unashamedly fighting for the Dark Lord.
And then there was her.
Neutral - she declared herself neutral and never defaced her skin with a tattoo like Bellatrix, and never defaced her name for a Muggle-born like Andromeda. But Lucius could not be neutral. There was no power in neutrality and he gravitated to where the power was. Then, when the balance shifted, this time it was too late. My husband is in Azkaban, she thought, as she plastered a smile onto her face and got ready to face the day. The inside was nothing at all like the outside.
My son is alive. When it came down to it, wasn't that the most important thing? Isn't that what she gave up everything for? So that now, makeup complete, looking dignified and solemn, she could call out down the hallway of Malfoy Manor? "Draco? Are you ready?"
"Nearly, Mum," came his aggravated voice and her smile became real because despite everything, Draco was alive.
He was everything to her. Today he turned twenty, but she still remembered the day he was born. Exhausted and scared, ready to give up, and then they put a tiny baby boy in her arms. Lucius was distant. He was pleased to have a son, said so, and then left the two of them alone. For the first time, Narcissa understood what it meant to love someone more than you loved yourself. She was willing to lay down everything important to her, including her life, in order to protect this small pink child.
Draco's first words ("Mum," then "mine"). His first sign of magical ability (The liquor cabinet exploded across the room when he was angry). His quick learning on being a Malfoy, the way he walked with poise and dignity (He always made sure to introduce himself as Malfoy first, then Draco; he knew so young that there was pride to be had in his name).
There was no pride left in the Malfoy name, though. The whispers whenever she went somewhere: "Poor Narcissa - with Lucius in Azkaban." "I can't imagine how she does it." "How she does it now?! I can't imagine having a husband who deserved to go to Azkaban!" Did they not realize she could hear? Did they not care? Narcissa just wanted to escape from the life she had built for herself. A house of cards, fanciful and nearly perfect. Let me come in, or I'll blow your house down. In came the Dark Lord, promising protection and safety, but still her house blew down.
The act she put on as neutral, when all along she knew what her husband did, and allowed the Dark Lord to make her house his home, kept her from the acceptance of most of society. Those she did not offend by her neutrality were offended by her lie - those three little words whispered in the middle of the night, a life for a life. "He is dead."
She could not bring herself to regret the words that, in the long run, killed her sister, the words that sent her husband away, perhaps for life. She could not bring herself to regret that the other side had won the war, or that because she proclaimed his death, Harry Potter still lived.
There was no room for regret, and she hid all of her disappointment, because she still woke up in the morning, still faced herself in a mirror and tried to put herself together again. And still she wandered down the hallway to her son, pulled him close, and wished him a happy birthday. Though he pulled away and said, "Mum, I'm twenty, not two," and informed her that he would spend his birthday with Astoria, he was still there. She would have new memories of him yet. At the end of the day, nothing else mattered.