Previously in the Darklyverse: Sirius, Lily, and Reg broke the rest of the Order (minus Dumbledore) out of Azkaban.
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October 4th, 1982: Narcissa Malfoy
Meetings should feel different without the Dark Lord there to lead them. Before, the warriors sat in a hush around Narcissa's dining room table, only speaking when spoken to, cowering when the Dark Lord's eyes flickered to them. Without him, they should be basking in their victories, denouncing their setbacks, overlapping their voices and curses—they should be unafraid.
They are not unafraid. Avery's body stops thrashing, but his open eyes remain haunted, distant, empty. Bella lowers her wand.
"Would anyone else like to besmirch my master's legacy?" she asks sweetly and is met with silence. As though nothing's happened—and in Bella's world, use of the Cruciatus Curse probably counts as nothing—she goes on, "Now, can someone explain to me how Reginald Cattermole gained access to Azkaban in the first place?"
"His record was clean," mutters Jugson. His head is bowed, and his hands, clasped together in front of him on the table, are trembling. "He was a pureblood, a lowly Magical Maintenance employee at the M—"
"His wife—was—a vigilante!" squeals Bella. Her voice sounds playful, even delighted, but her eyes give her away. "A Mudblood vigilante! One of Dumbledore's!"
"I believe, ma'am," says Karkaroff in his oily voice, "that no one thought to closely screen the applicants for the opening. It's easy to forget that Azkaban even employs humans—"
"We had the filth! We had them! We had the legitimacy to make the public doubt their heroes, and we squandered it!"
"And they still doubt them," says Lucius, flinching when Narcissa rests a hand on his shoulder. "I assure you, the Prophet won't be reporting the breakout—"
Wilkes interjects, "If we give the Prophet the story and offer a reward for delivering information that leads to their capture, we can set the eyes of all of Wizarding Britain on them. Do we really intend to give away the opportunity to put the death penalty on their heads—to put the bitches down as we should have all along?"
Bella spits in his face as Wilkes seems to realize his mistake: it was always the Dark Lord's wish to, shall Narcissa say, play with the food before eating it. As far as Narcissa is concerned, however, Wilkes has a point: the Dark Lord would still be here with them if they'd put down the lot of them years ago, if they'd tried harder after losing the intel of the spy, Peter Pettigrew. She's not fully privy to the inner circle's reasoning—why they killed so many vigilantes in so few months, after years of leaving them mostly to their own devices and followed by months without any deaths—but as far as Narcissa has been able to glean, the slew of deaths last year were driven by a desire to manipulate Pettigrew, to shame him for his own hand in his organization's downfall. It was a power grab, sure, but not for the reasons one might assume.
The Dark Lord always did want there to be a resistance to his machinations. Without a resistance, Lucius told her once, people would have no hope, and there would be no fun in squashing that hope like a roach.
"We still have Dumbledore," says Rosier hesitantly. "Cattermole didn't manage to break him free."
"I suppose the question," Lucius says now, and Narcissa is sure he's trying to divert Bella's attention away from Wilkes's misstep just like Rosier is, "is whether the Mudbloods and blood traitors would be influenced more strongly by believing their heroes are free to save them or by knowing that those same heroes will be not just imprisoned, but executed, when they're found—and we will find them, of that I assure you."
"We should report the breakout," says Rookwood, "before the scum announce their freedom to the world. If the news comes from the Prophet, then we control the narrative."
You'd think it would be Lucius's decision to make—he's the Minister, after all, and just won the special election solidifying his tenure for the next seven years—but all eyes flick to Bella, who throws her hands up in front of her as she stands from the table. "Leak the story," she says to Wilkes, "and get out of my sight."
In an instant, he Disapparates, along with half the fighters at the table. It's only a few minutes before Narcissa and Lucius are left alone in an otherwise empty room.
Draco is crying in the other room, and Narcissa whispers, "It's time for his feeding. I'll clear up here in a moment."
The thing is, she reflects with Draco in her arms and Lucius nowhere to be found, that Bella's always been a little, well, unhinged. In some ways, it's no wonder that Andy went and married a Mudblood—she probably thought that the other side had to be better than a family who would Cruciate her for every ripped stuffy or spilled mug of tea. Narcissa used to think it was pathetic, the way Andy betrayed all her morals and jumped on the first man who showed her a little pity: after all, Narcissa bore the brunt of Bella's hurricanes as much as Andy ever did, and she still managed to have enough respect for herself not to associate with filth. But it's not really Andy's fault that she was never as strong as Narcissa was, is it? Narcissa knew better, but Andy couldn't help loving Bella, and love sets you up for misery. She didn't really understand that before, but she does now that she has Draco.
"You'll understand when you're older," she whispers to Draco as she tips the bottle away from his mouth. "They persecuted us, centuries ago, because that's who they are: greedy and power-hungry. We're only taking back what ought to have belonged to us all along. I won't let you grow up in a world where you have to be afraid."
She realizes that Andy probably said something very similar to her child when Nymphadora was young. The Azkaban breakout means that Andy is out there somewhere in the world now, probably holed up with the rest of the Phoenix scum, all plotting their survival. Narcissa wonders if Andy would have her and Lucius killed, if given the chance. Would she do it? Would she even hesitate?
She doesn't see much of Lucius anymore. He works impossibly long hours at the Ministry, and even when he's home, he's usually conferring with other fighters or else holed up in his study with notes and diagrams all spread out in front of him, pursing his lips, worry lines prominent in his forehead. When he finally comes to bed at night, he turns and faces the wall and doesn't meet her eyes.
"I'm sorry about Bella," she tells him for what feels like the thousandth time. "I know she's always been… and she's getting worse now that the Dark Lord is gone."
"I want her away from Draco," Lucius mumbles. Even in the dark, her husband is all hard lines and edges. "I don't want her doing to him what she did to you—what she does."
"She's my sister," says Narcissa weakly.
"I don't care. She's a monster."
She doesn't point out what they're both thinking—that the Dark Lord was a monster, too. There's a reason Narcissa never took the Mark, and it's not just because of Bella. "Are we doing the right thing?" she asks instead. "Have we gone too far?"
"Terror is the only way to keep these people in their place," he reminds her. "If we don't scare them, really scare them, they'll realize how few of us are left and terrorize us the way they used to. The torture, the deaths—they're necessary. We've been over this."
He's right about one thing—they have been over this—but every time, he's the one who does all the talking. The thing is, Narcissa knows she could speak up. She could tell Lucius that the measures the warriors take are too extreme, that she doesn't want Draco growing up influenced by an example of so much violence. She's not saying she doesn't agree with the Death Eaters' aims—she wants the world to be safe for her son, for purebloods who know this society's history to make the decisions for what's best for wizards—but sometimes… sometimes she thinks Lucius tortures Mudbloods for the fun of it, not for necessity's sake, and she doesn't want Draco growing up around that. The Dark Lord always did like his mind games, and so does Bella—so, now, she worries, does Lucius.
But she knows Lucius is in too deep for any of them to safely get out: if he resigns his post as Minister or steps back from the Death Eaters, Bella will surely have him hunted, tormented, and killed. Look what happened to Regulus—she won't lose her husband, too.
Regulus was always her favorite cousin, and when he died—but Narcissa shouldn't allow herself to think about that. He was a traitor, and he didn't appreciate what needed to be done—never mind whether all of it really was necessary.
She can't afford to question. She can't afford to have doubts.