Housekeeping: I GOT MY FIRST REVIEWS! Thank you to absolutely-a-supernatural-fan and JasmineFlower! Sorry for the formatting issues in the first chapter, I hope they've been fixed in the newer chapters. I'm still learning the ropes of FF. It was also pointed out to me that it must be at least 1997 for this story! I had hoped for it to be a few years after their last year at Hogwarts, so we will go with 2001 from here on out. Thank you all for being so amazing!
On to the story!
EDITED NOV 2021
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It took Narcissa only a split second to make up her mind. She summoned a quill, ink, and parchment. She made an ingredient list and told Twippy to have them chopped and ready for her, and to wake her in twenty minutes. Thank Salazar the Malfoys had always taught their elves to read. The Black elves had never known how, as her family had generally considered them stupid and unable to learn. The Malfoys were experts at getting the most from what they'd been given, and their elves were no different. Thus, Twippy's ancestors had been taught to read and they had passed the skills down to her and her brother.
Draco needed her to come through for him, but a quick glance at the time and she saw that she'd been researching for hours. The horizon was becoming visible, and the sun would be up in mere hours. How long since Draco had been taken? Where was he, and what are those filthy Lestrange brothers doing to him? It was with these sorts of anxious thoughts that she drifted off to an uneasy sleep.
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Twippy woke Narcissa from her fretful slumber at the appointed time, and Narcissa looked out the large windows to see that the sky was beginning to lighten to a languid blue. She shook herself and went to the North tower of the manor where the potions lab was located. She walked through the well-stocked storerooms located just below the lab without a second glance.
Arriving in the potions lab, she saw the workbench located right in the middle was set exactly as she had ordered, and Twippy was nowhere to be found. Good elf, Narcissa thought. On another day, she might have looked forward to the breakfast the elf was undoubtedly making. Narcissa surveyed the spread of ingredients appreciatively. They were laid out before the size 3 platinum cauldron in the order she would need them, chopped, minced, and diced in the correct sizes.
Narcissa got to work brewing her potion, following the book's alterations perfectly.
She was soon looking at the light pink bubbling potion and chanting the words over it that were needed.
"Puer protegas me, misit ad eum parse animam eius." Roughly, Protect my child, send unto him the piece to his soul.
She didn't know how long it would take until it worked, but she was going to do it as many times as it took.
Narcissa was there for a long time before she felt her magic draining and the potion looked strawberry pink. 'The potency must be strong,' she thought.
A quick glance back at the book told her to drink the potion exactly two minutes after brewing. She cast a timing charm and waited the allotted time. When the unicorn tail inside her mahogany wand vibrated, she chugged it down like she had been in the desert for weeks and this was the first water she had seen. It tasted like Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, much too sweet for Narcissa's taste.
Narcissa drank the last drop and fell to the ground, completely limp. The goblet she had been drinking from rolled from her grasp across the floor. Her eyes lazily fluttered shut, but she did not sleep. No, suddenly she was seeing things from another person's eyes.
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The red haired Weasley girl – oh no, this was the company Draco would have to keep? - had Floo called her to talk about something to do with an incoming baby. Draco's soul mate was pregnant? Oh no, it was the Weasley. Good.
The girl didn't question how the heavily pregnant woman got down into the fireplace, or the hilarious story of Harry accidentally vanishing her overnight bag for St. Mungo's in his panic.
She merely said she met them at the hospital.
As she walked through the doors into the maternity wing, something made her turn around.
Her eyes immediately went to Draco Malfoy, who had not been there a moment before, and was very out of place in the clean hospital.
Obviously, he had a cut on his right check and his normally immaculate hair was disheveled. His clothes were pajamas! But there was something even more to it.
The detail-oriented girl could see the panic in his eyes, and the way he was standing made it look like he was trying to keep the weight off his left leg. Their eyes didn't meet, and it was almost as though he couldn't even see her. She felt torn between her best friends who needed her, and this ex-classmate who also seemed to need her. Her brain kicked in at this moment.
This wasn't just some stranger who needed her bleeding heart to take over, this was MALFOY. Draco Malfoy, who wouldn't take her Muggleborn help anyway! She turned away from him to go to her friends who were possibly, at this moment welcoming their baby.
"Granger."
It was so quiet; he might not even have said anything.
She hesitated, keeping her back to him, and closing her eyes in annoyance. How dare he say her name after everything they'd been through!
"Granger!" He screamed out.
And the sound was so loud that the girl was startled awake.
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Narcissa felt herself come back to her own body as her consciousness separated itself from the girl's. Had she been dreaming of Draco? What a convoluted saga this was turning out to be!
Draco looked much the same as he did when she had last seen him, only obviously beaten to a pulp.
But the girl...
A muggleborn named Granger.
It could only be the frizzy-haired twerp who followed Harry Potter around.
Because everyone knew who Hermione Granger was.
Even if she didn't, there was no way she could forget the cries of the half-starved girl who had been tortured – carved into by her own sister! – in her drawing room.
Narcissa indulged in a bit of uncharacteristic cursing at this.
Bloody fuck.
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