~ For Newt ~
From a young age Narcissa had understood that she was only meant to do a few things; look pretty, say nothing, and marry well. Narcissa understood them, the rules she was meant to follow blindly. The rules her sisters never quite grasped. But Narcissa did, and she layered her mind with them.
Look pretty.
Wear the most expensive robes mother can buy, the most elegant and stunning of all the others. Dress yourself in brilliant pearl necklaces and lovely diamond rings. Make sure to curl your hair every night without fail. That was some of the advice given to her by some of her relatives, words she heeded closely. She was told to think only of clothes, dimples, and the way her hair fell when she fluttered her eyelashes at a potential suitor.
Say nothing.
Never speak when mother and father scream and shout at each other for hours on end. Look down demurely when a boy asks you to dance. Retreat into the library when family friends, known death eaters and criminals, choose to pay your family a visit and speak in barely audible whispers over cold tea. Do not fret when you hear them shouting, Andromeda reminded her. Never forget to think of pretty things.
Marry Well.
Marry yourself into a high and powerful family, one of your family's friends. Bear the most beautiful of children. Wear pearls and look demure and continue to think of nothing but pretty, pretty things. Like how wondrously your husband's hair gleams in the candlelight.
Those rules were drilled into her head from such a young age, that she had no other choice but to heed them, and learn them well. Masters must learn the rules before they can even begin to break them she recalled Sirius saying once upon a time. Before the war and his disownment. It was the one piece of his advice that she would ever actually follow.
And so she learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her, sank into her skin and her mind. They were armour that protected her from any enemies she might come across. They concealed the quick, strategic plots that switched her brain into gear every moment of every day. The rules hid the calculation of each smile and each movement.
She was so good and so perfect that no one would ever know her true cunning, her true power. To them she would be a perfect rose, one without thorns who could never harm a soul. But she was a Slytherin, a Snake, and they were all fools to not see it. Look like a flower, but be the serpent underneath.
And a serpent she would be, especially when it was her family at risk. Family always comes first, that was her mother's motto. The last yet most important rule she was meant to follow. The one she hid in the deepest, darkest part of her mind. Because now, in a time of war, family was said to be less important than the Dark Lord. Less important than undying, unwavering allegiance to a man she'd only heard of in fearful whispers. But Narcissa Malfoy was not scared.
No, she was determined. Determined to get any sort of revenge on the man who was slowly tearing her family apart and destroying everything she had come to love. He'd ruined Lucius, driven him mad with a lust for power not once, but twice. Voldemort had quite literally driven her eldest sister insane, given her a passion for torture. And then he'd had the audacity to mark their son, her son, with what was turning out to be a death sentence. Her sweet little Draco for whom she'd do anything to protect.
Snape had sworn to protect Draco but he could do nothing against the Dark Lord, especially when he was already a suspect of betrayal. So now it was her job, as it should have been from the beginning. He was ruining her family and she would get revenge in any way she found fit, in any way she could without getting caught - which was a fair many. Because family always comes first, and he was coming after her family. That was his first mistake.
His second was being so trusting of her. He was scared of Snape's wavering loyalty, of his clear power and promise. But he never suspected her, because she would slide right by without another glance. A perfect, pureblooded wife with nothing in her head but pretty, pretty thoughts. She wasn't a threat in his mind, no, she was far from that. All Narcissa was to him was some silly woman, Lucius' wife.
And while he was wary of Lucius and Draco, he never suspected her. She wasn't smart enough, wouldn't be brave nor selfless enough to defeat him. He dismissed her from his mind as a possible threat because she was a woman, he wasn't wary of her because she was a woman. She was well aware of that, and she'd use it to her advantage. That's how she came up with the best form of her revenge. She would be the one to tip the scales this time, to be the one that helped in his defeat.
It came to her one evening as she retreated to the library with nothing but pretty thoughts in her head and pearls around her neck. That she was not the only woman to have been in this position before. She could clearly recall Voldemort being overly suspicious and wary of James and Harry Potter, but he never once thought of Lily as a reasonable opponent. But there she was, Lily and her love having killed the man. Even if she'd died in the process.
Narcissa stood on a horrifying battlefield, with fallen witches and wizards at their feet, staring upon the forest where Voldemort and his men trudged out of. It was all going as she'd planned so far, as she'd hoped for it to go. No one knew of her thoughts, knew how her mind swirled in schemes far beyond their imagination. Her love for Draco and her family was far more powerful than Lord Voldemort ever was and ever would be.
"Dead!" she proclaimed the the thousands of cheering Death Eaters around her, the lie sounding so obviously fake to her as it rolled off her tongue. Yet no one seemed to notice, not even their so-called leader. Family comes first, she thought with the tiniest of smiles, and Voldemort knew nothing about family. But she was satisfied now, more than happy with how her scheme had played out. Her revenge was done now, and it would soon be clear to the world just how deep that revenge would strike. After all, a mother's love had killed Voldemort the first time.
And she was the reason that it would kill him again.