I decided to really finish this off because I was reading through some of my old works and this didn't seem complete x
Please can I have just one review? It doesn't have to be long or anything, but this is the longest story I've written that doesn't have any kind of feedback and I'd really like some xx I'm sorry this one is much shorter, it was just rounding everything off xx :)
Sometimes, on the days when everything hurts, she wondered if it was worth it. Then she shakes herself because of course it is - Harry Potter himself had intervened before she could be sent to Azkaban, Draco also escaping that Fate, and even though Lucius hadn't been as lucky as the rest of them he had been released earlier than she could have expected, and in a fairly stable mental condition.
He would never be the man she had married again, but he would never be like the inmates she had seen at the Dark Lord's bidding, driven insane by the Dementor's and a need for power. Her sister had been one of those.
With the exception of a three-year long monitoring of her own magic and providing several memories of specific meetings she had come away practically scot-free, helped by the obvious lack of the Dark Mark on her arm. Once her role in the Final Battle had been explained by Potter no one had pushed too hard with her, knowing that she personally was unlikely to have taken part in any of the actual crimes, and even then for the sake of her family.
She had a grandson now, and a gorgeous daughter-in-law who was everything she could've hoped for her son and far better than the advantageous match Lucius had planned with the Parkinson's. Narcissa was not shunned by society, not as much as she had once feared in this situation, as she had been publically declared by Harry Potter to have helped in the downfall of Lord Voldemort.
She would never be accepted, nor particularly liked, but they still invited her to Ministry functions and she still mingled with the politicians wives (though not the Minister's, Kingsley Shacklebolt not being entirely accepting of former criminals).
Her life was good, not as good as it had always been neither as a child nor a newly-wed, but there were many ways that this could have gone that were far worse.
But still she wondered on days when their looks got to her and the whispers reached her ears - was it worth it?
She had lost her family, her husband lost in another world more often than not, even if he was still sane. Draco would never trust her to protect him again and he would never trust her with his son either.
Narcissa had lost both her sisters, one to death and madness, the other to death and grief. No matter how much Bellatrix's death had hurt, and she herself was surprised at how much, Andromeda's complete refusal to speak with her last living sister stung more.
Narcissa knew that her estranged sister was bringing up the werewolf child, with the aid of his godfather Harry Potter. She knew she could never be accepted there, and she would be surprised to be. Narcissa was only Andromeda's reminder of how far family could fall and how even kin could destroy each other. Sometimes she dreamt of Bellatrix's mad cackle and watched her niece fall to the ground.
Bellatrix had left a member of their family orphaned, a fate she would wish on no child.
No matter what she could not forgive her beloved sister for that. No matter what she had forgiven her wildest sister for, this was one thing she would never excuse and sometimes it tore at her heart.
And yet life went on. No one stopped for the woes of Narcissa Malfoy anymore, so she kept them quiet and to herself. The only people she saw regularly were her husband and son.
Narcissa Malfoy was merely a shadow of what she once was, living the life of a ghost in the shadows and trying to pretend that it didn't sting to do so. As a child she had dreamed of nothing more than being loved, being adored. She had done that by being the centre of attention, by drawing them in like moths to a flame.
But even the flame can be dimmed, in the tangle of family ties that had pulled her into the life she had never wanted.
And her own family had paid that price, something she would never forgive herself for.
Narcissa wasn't happy, not really, but neither was her family. She would never forget that their misery was her fault.