Can I have just one review for this? Please? I'm sorry this is a bit choppy, but you already know what happens in the books, I just wanted to see it from Narcissa's perspective x I've really enjoyed writing this but this will remain a one-shot (I tell myself now) x Please read and review x
The Dark Lord had risen again.
Her family, already never the same again after the first war, would be torn apart - she knew that already.
Lucius would return to the Dark Lord, to save them all, and her son would follow.
Her darling son.
She knew she couldn't stop it - not unless she wanted to get them all killed. But she could delay it for as long as possible - and boy would she try to.
She would not willingly let her son near the Dark Lord. Not yet, not ever.
The next year was tense. The Dark Lord had not yet spent time in their home, knowing that Lucius couldn't afford to come under suspicion, but her husband still spent the majority of his time whispering into the ear of the Minister for Magic, against the old fool and the Potter brat.
That year her son was safe.
But her husband wasn't.
He was arrested at the Ministry for Magic, her home searched, herself taken into custody. Luckily she had been released quickly, and before the end of school, giving her time to prepare for her son.
He was bitter and angry about his father's arrest and never before had he looked so much like all the things she hated in this family.
She had only gone to see Lucius twice.
Her son had joined the Dark Lord. Barely sixteen and he'd been trapped into a fate she'd never wanted for him, punished for the sins of his father. At least he had Severus to watch over him, someone who cared - his godfather.
She would make sure that Severus kept a very close eye on her son, preventing him from doing anything stupid in an attempt to follow his orders. He would not go to Azkaban.
She would not - could not - lose them both. Not to that terrible place.
She had seen her eldest sister, more unhinged and volatile than ever, hanging on to sanity by a precarious thread that dangled backwards and forwards.
It was still her sister.
Only this was a form of her that Narcissa despised, twisted and insane. She saw how she could look - how her husband could look, if this war went badly for them.
Her year was long. The Dark Lord stopped by the house now - there was no need to keep Lucius out of anyone's suspicions, and they were well enough warded for that anyway.
There were whispers of what her son was doing, of the attempts on the old headmasters life, usually in the form of her husband, still shaking in post-cruciatus tremors at their sons failures.
By December it was rare for him to even make it home.
But he always did.
She didn't have the dark mark herself. As a loyal and trusted follower's wife, it had never been required of her, and declaring her loyalties as brazenly as that had never been her style, even if the Blacks as a whole had been fond of the technique.
Either way, she'd managed to bow out of being marked, one of the few followers to accomplish the feat.
She couldn't help feel like her son had paid the price for her unblemished skin and wished she could do it all over again.
Her son shouldn't have to suffer like this.
Her son wouldn't have to suffer like this. Never again.
She locked up the thought tight behind her mental barriers.
Draco had managed it. Draco had succeeded in what even the Dark Lord had failed to accomplish.
Only he hadn't.
Severus had, instead on her son.
Draco had failed in his task and for that he had paid the price. She hadn't even been there, but her husband had watched their son scream and stood by and done nothing.
She couldn't understand him sometimes. Sometimes she didn't want to.
Narcissa couldn't get the mental image out of her head, her son writhing and shrieking on the floor like a common muggle.
Sometimes she thought it was better when the Dark Lord was gone.
She knew it was better when there hadn't been a Dark Lord in the first place.
But neither of those mattered now. Now the Dark Lord was angry and her husband and her son were in the crossfire.
During the Dark Lord's time at Malfoy Manor Narcissa had seen many horrific things, many things she'd wished she'd not see again. Murder had happened at the dinner table, in the bedrooms, in the dungeons. Their dungeons had been transformed into torture chambers, sadistically ruled over by Bellatrix and her husband. She could hear them cackling wildly if she dared to walk past.
Her son had been tortured, been forced to torture others.
Her patience for the Dark Lord snapped just a little bit more.
She just wanted this to end.
The tension was mounting. The resistance continued to fight, even in the absence of Potter and Narcissa couldn't even send her son off to Hogwarts to protect him from the horrors that were happening in his home.
And then one day the Snatchers arrived at the door, claiming to have Potter and his friends in their possession.
She had entered the drawing room to find her sister salivating over the bodies and the fearful look in her sons eyes as he watched.
She knew he was lying. She was his mother.
The Potter boy was in her house.
And she couldn't bring herself to truly care.
She'd stayed out of the way as much as possible, keeping her son to the edges of the room and sending him off to the restrained prisoners rather than let him watch his deranged aunt torture a school mate.
The ensuing calamity had her dive for the floor as her crystal chandelier exploded over head and the house elf disapperated and her sister shrieked in fury, and the first thing Narcissa did was check that her son was safe.
He wasn't for very long, not after the Dark Lord found out that they'd had Potter in their clutches and they'd let him escape. She'd tasted the cruciatus before, but never like this.
When she'd heard that her sisters Gringotts vault had been broken in to, she'd feared for the even more. But ultimately there had been no need.
After all who needed torture when you could start a war?
Her son was at Hogwarts. Her son was at Hogwarts. Hogwarts, about to go to war, about to be torn to rubble.
Her son was in the middle of everything that was going on and not particularly liked by either side. She didn't care what her orders had been, that she could be injured.
She was damn well finding her Draco.
This was like nothing she'd seen before, war on a terrible scale. There hadn't been many dead on the grounds, where she had been, but there were enough and, more than ever, she hated what her son had seen. He was never supposed to see anything like this, not ever.
Only now he was involved, dragged into a war that didn't concern either of them.
She waited in forest at her orders, practically vibrating with tension at the need to find her son.
By the time Potter came down to the forest she didn't really care who won the battle. Right now she had a missing son to locate and she hasn't even seen her husband.
She just needed her family back together.
Narcissa ignored what the Dark Lord and Potter were saying, staying tense and still, watching their movements.
The Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse and Potter made no move to deflect it, move out of the way. He simply stood there and took it and fell to the ground in the same moment as the Dark Lord. her breath climbed in her throat, the thought of ending this war all at once.
And then the Dark Lord had risen shakily to his feet, pointing at her and ordering her to check his rival.
She leant closer to feel the Potter boy's pulse and felt it flutter beneath his fingers.
She felt a moment of wonder and confusion that was quickly surpassed by the need to know if her son was alive.
And the Potter boy told her what she needed.
For that she would keep quiet.
She would do no more than that. She couldn't.
She followed the procession up to the Great Hall, hovering at the back and watching warily for her son. She found her husband first and, in his triumph, the Dark Lord didn't even seem to notice Lucius slipping away from his side to join Narcissa. He touched a gentle hand to her wrist, before both of them turned to the crowd to find Draco.
Lucius found him first, informing her with a quick squeeze of her fingers.
She glanced at him and flicked her eyes over to where he was looking, the platinum blond hair of their son lank and greasy, with dirt and dust running through it. Their eyes met and her lips trembled and she couldn't care less what was happening with Potter and the Dark Lord.
As the two rivals circled each other, the Malfoy's edged around the room, unnoticed by the spellbound crowd, and finally hugged each other tightly as the Dark Lord tumbled to the ground. Lucius and Draco both hissed slightly, their hands going to their Dark Marks, memories that could never be forgotten.
She had her family back.
She knew it would be hard. There would be even more trials and glares and possibly even Azkaban once again. Her family would be disgraced in history.
But they had each other. It didn't matter what the history books thought of them.
(Well it did, but not as much as her family did. Her son was well worth the price.)