[Wednesday one-shots]: Narcissa Watchful, Lucius/Narcissa, H/D, PG-13, 6.6/7
Part Five.
Part One.
Title: Narcissa Watchful (6/9)
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Established Harry/Draco and Narcissa/Lucius
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Angst, violence, crack, AU
Summary: Narcissa will search out the Horcruxes. She will remove the Horcrux from her foster son’s head. She will give her cousin Sirius a purpose in life. She will free her husband from his ill-thought-out allegiance to the Dark Lord. She will do something else then, because that is not enough to fill her life.
Author’s Notes: Sixth in a series of stories where Narcissa is an in-demand spy and assassin and Harry’s foster mother. Don’t read this one without reading the others first, seriously.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Six
“Are you ready for the next part of the ritual?” Narcissa held up the wooden griffin’s claw she had carved-after a careful study of one who owed her a favor-and eyed her husband. Lucius stood in the middle of the room, in white robes that he seemed to feel would add to the ritual. They bared the Dark Mark, so Narcissa had let him think it.
“You’re not using the same implements as last time?”
“No. I planned on it, but I know that Voldemort knows about my trying to free you now, so we shall have to change it a little.”
Lucius turned so pale that he made the robes look like a good fashion choice after all. He glanced around as if he wanted to flee back from her rooms to Malfoy Manor. Unluckily for him, Narcissa had already shut the Floo. “What? You didn’t tell me that.”
“I did. You were arguing with me at the time about why you wanted to do this at the Manor instead of at Hogwarts. Is it my fault if you didn’t pay attention?” Narcissa clicked her tongue. “Now, kneel, if you please.”
Lucius cast a Cushioning Charm on the floor that produced an actual cushion, red, with golden tassels. Narcissa hid her amusement. It would not disturb the ritual if he wanted to do something like this.
Narcissa cupped the griffin’s claw in her own curled fingers, attuning herself to the small ridges in the wood and the way that it warmed as she held it. Then she breathed out, “I will,” and scattered the salt she held across the runes she’d traced on her floor. They glowed brilliant red as the salt fell on them, and then the white particles slid across the stone into the exact shapes she’d made.
Lucius gasped aloud. Narcissa nodded without opening her eyes. She had drawn the circle more of the will than her runes; without that will, they wouldn’t have activated. He would be feeling it now, an immense pull on the next part of the Dark Mark that she had decided to eradicate.
“I call you off,” she said, in the same tone of voice that she’d used to intone the first words. “I call you to come to me.”
“Narcissa-”
She shifted a little, letting him see the whip strapped to the side of her leg, and he shut up. It was only luck that his interruption hadn’t been disastrous. But they were in a pause between the moments when she gathered her power right now, which let her name fall into the silence and fade away instead of creating ripples.
Narcissa turned in a circle, imitating the shape she had made around Lucius. The runes glowed and began to burn away the salt. Narcissa faced the circle again. She had to act before those brilliant flames died away.
“Come to me.”
Lucius screamed as part of the Dark Mark crisped off and hurtled towards Narcissa, just above the glowing runes.
Narcissa held out her hand, and the runes flared to life at the same moment, an invocation of her will. The flames leaped upwards and gripped the piece of blackness that had come from the Dark Mark. It struggled, and burned, and flapped, and was feeble, and died away at last, leaving Narcissa to flex her fingers in the silence.
And smile.
“Take a look at your Dark Mark, Lucius,” she said, brushing her hands together. The ash that had been the wooden claw crisped softly away.
Lucius glanced down, and swallowed. “The snake’s head and one of the skull’s eye sockets are almost entirely gone,” he whispered.
“That’s right.” Narcissa turned in another circle, sweeping her foot hard over the floor. When she turned back, she had opened a gap in the circle of runes, which meant nothing bad now that they were inactive. She crossed over to Lucius and lifted her husband slowly to his feet. “And how do you feel?”
Lucius continued to frown at his arm as if he wasn’t sure of the answer to that. Then he abruptly looked up and straight into her eyes.
Narcissa stroked his hair back from his face. Yes, there was the sharp intelligence of the man she had married, the man who would never have fallen this far into the Dark Lord’s schemes or done something that endangered his son or defied her to her face.
“Well,” Narcissa breathed.
Lucius broke free of her hands with a sharp jerk, and scowled for a moment at the broken circle. “You know that I won’t be as pliant as I was in the past?”
“I know. But at one time we achieved a mutual satisfactory level of both of us yielding and both of us protecting our family. I would like to achieve that level again.”
“When have you ever been yielding about anything?”
Narcissa shrugged. “I did not force you to get rid of the Dark Mark when I first realized you had it, although I could have found these rituals then and carried them out, even against your will. I chose to trust you and see if your decision to follow Voldemort would repay us. I have not done many things I could have done, Lucius.”
“I will make my choices from now on.”
“As long as they do not endanger Draco, Harry, me, you, or our standing as a family, I see no reason that will not also be satisfactory.”
Lucius continued to study her as if he assumed she would suddenly change her mind. Narcissa smiled at him serenely. Lucius nodded, and then said, “What should I do if he contacts me again? Or attempts to enter the Manor?”
“Ignore him, as you have been doing. And if he does somehow send a message that makes it through the wards, then you can tell him that your evil wife is keeping you from acknowledging him as is proper.”
Lucius hesitated, then nodded. “You know that he will target you more strongly than ever now.”
“I am looking forward to it.” Narcissa thought of the tantrum he had carried out in her mind, and smiled.
Lucius backed cautiously away, then departed via the now-unlocked Floo, as he had arrived. Narcissa stretched out her arms, humming pleasantly, and cleaned up the remains of the rune circle before settling down to mark the essays she had set the third years. Most of them were less muddle-headed than her husband had been made by his Dark Mark.
*
“Mother! Mother!”
Narcissa was on her feet in a moment with her wand in her hand when she heard that voice, and it only took her a moment longer to realize that the voice calling her name was Harry’s and not Draco’s. He clung to her door, gasping for a second, and then remembered his breathing lessons and said, “Professor Freyasdaughter got Draco to stay alone with her after class. I tried to stay, but she forced me out.”
“Just now?” Narcissa was already moving, heading for the Defense classroom.
“Yes.” Harry was running beside her, drawing a knife as he did. “Five minutes ago, now.”
Narcissa raised an eyebrow in silent praise for how fast he’d reached her office from the classroom, and then concentrated on moving smoothly down the stairs. Harry exhaled and inhaled beside her in a steady rhythm. Although Narcissa wouldn’t have needed the company to defend her son, she found herself taking unexpected pleasure in it as they rounded corners together and floated across landings where Hogwarts tried to move the staircases. Here was the proof that she had trained Harry well
They were outside the Defense classroom so quickly that it was a little stunning. Narcissa drew her wand and listened for a moment. There were no cries for help.
There were no sounds at all.
Narcissa concentrated one more time and then kicked the door in. It went flying; the doors of the classrooms were surprisingly flimsy, at least if one had spent time studying where to kick them.
Harry piled in behind her, panting. Idunna was standing with her wand pointed at Draco, but she twisted to blink at them as though she had done nothing wrong. Draco stood quietly, his hands clasped behind his back and the shimmer of his shields still around him.
“What are you doing with my son?” Narcissa asked. She was glad that she was not panting, but she didn’t lower her wand.
“Checking him for traces of Dark magic, of course. The Horcrux influenced you. It might also have influenced him.”
“And you decided that you needed to put a Silencing Charm over the classroom for that?” Narcissa asked. She made sure her voice was scathing, and Idunna started to draw herself up.
“The spell sometimes produces pain! I saw no need for the other children to be frightened by his screams if it did.”
Narcissa bit back what she wanted to say, and instead said, slowly and clearly, “I deny you permission to interrogate or cast such spells at my son at any time. Are we clear, Professor Freyasdaughter?”
“I’m afraid that my duty to the other children in the castle, to make sure they are not exposed to such evil, outweighs my respect for your permission.”
Harry’s hand twitched, and Narcissa knew without asking that he was trying to go for a knife, because it was what she would have done in his place. She managed to block him with a quick twist, and smile at Idunna, or give her an expression she could take as a smile. “If Headmistress McGonagall was forced to sack you for not respecting permission, then I think you might reevaluate your priorities.”
Idunna stared at her, and blinked. “I do not understand.”
“I know,” Narcissa said, and then shook her head. “All parents have to give permission for their children to experience such spells, Professor Freyasdaughter. I’m surprised that you didn’t know. It’s one reason that Madam Pomfrey has to send off owls if she doesn’t have blanket permission and wants to use a potion that produces enough pain. Last year there was a problem with a young girl who needed Skele-Gro, I believe, and her parents refused permission and took her to St. Mungo’s instead.”
She caught Draco’s eye and motioned with a flick of her eyelid. Draco made his way quietly to her side.
“But-defense against the Dark is one reason that I was hired.”
“And you should know Light spells that do not produce such pain,” Narcissa said, softly, warningly. “I hardly imagine that you were hired to torture students, either.”
“This would not be torture.”
“So non-torturous that you put a Silencing Charm on the door of your classroom.”
Idunna looked back and forth between her and Draco, and Narcissa was sure that she truly did not understand. Narcissa would have felt sorry for her if she was not utterly sure that Idunna now deserved to die, and had not intended to let Draco tell her about the spell she had been going to use, either.
“Yes, very well,” Idunna muttered at last. “If you wish to continue to expose other children and your foster son to the evil of a Horcrux, then I suppose I cannot prevent you, Professor Malfoy.” She lowered her own wand and fixed glittering eyes on Narcissa. “But the moment I see him influencing some other child for the worse, then I will attack, Professor Malfoy.”
Narcissa smiled thinly. “Have you made any progress on destroying the one that you have in your possession, Professor Freyasdaughter?”
“I am still researching the best way to do it without using Dark magic.”
“I suggest you research the policies that Hogwarts has regarding children with parents as well,” Narcissa said, and softly closed the classroom door behind her. Then she looked at Draco and waited.
“She didn’t hurt me,” Draco said. “She didn’t even cast a spell on me, just on the desks and chairs around me. I could see the floor blazing like it had runes on it. I didn’t want to move in case I did something wrong and got stung.”
“Good sense,” Narcissa said softly, and let her hand rest on Draco’s hair for a moment. “Are you still able to attend classes with her? I can take you out and tutor you myself, or Harry can, if you don’t feel safe.”
Draco frowned down at the floor for a second, then shook his head. “I think I’ll be all right. I’ll research stronger shields in case she does try to cast that spell on me. And-you’re going to let her live, Mother?”
“For now,” Narcissa said. “But it is very much for now.”
Draco seemed to accept the words at face value. Harry was the one who shot her a sideways glance as he reached out and hugged Draco to his side.
Narcissa smiled at him, mouthed, “I shall be impressed if you can guess which one it is,” and then swept off and back towards her quarters. Her sons followed her. She would order the house-elves to bring a private dinner to them so they didn’t have to face Idunna in the Great Hall so soon.
She would need to send a few owls, Narcissa thought as she set up a chessboard for her boys and then settled behind her desk again. She no longer kept the ingredients to brew such a slow-acting poison as Cadmus’s Gift on hand.
But she would have them, and she would brew it, and then she could easily slip it into Idunna’s food on one night when they sat beside each other.
No one touched her son and got away with it.
*
“Professor Malfoy, please come to my office at once.”
The silvery cat Patronus was dissipating almost before Narcissa opened her eyes to see it, but she recognized both Minerva’s Animagus form and her voice. She took enough time to slip out of her sleeping robes into ordinary ones. A summons in the middle of the night was urgent, but not urgent enough to make her abandon good taste.
It seemed that was not the case for Minerva, who was pacing about in a tartan robe when Narcissa stepped through the door from the top of the revolving staircase. Narcissa cast a spell to ease the impact on her eyes and then stood waiting.
Minerva turned to face her, expression so deeply troubled that it seemed as if she might begin to weep at any moment. “Voldemort has conducted an attack on a small village where a number of Muggleborns resided.”
Narcissa nodded slowly. She was surprised she hadn’t felt anything through the blood link, but perhaps Voldemort had learned better than to come into her mind. A trifle disappointing. “Why call me in the middle of the night about this? Did one of Harry’s classmates or someone Draco knows die?”
“No.” Minerva hesitated. “Voldemort placed the Dark Mark in the sky above the village, but he also placed a lightning bolt like the one on Harry’s head. I fear that this is a new distraction technique and that other wizards will begin to blame Harry for the attack, or even assume he has joined Voldemort.”
“They will not say such to my face.”
“No, but they don’t necessarily have to. You know how fast gossip spreads in this school.”
Narcissa considered it for a moment, then inclined her head. “Thank you for telling me, Headmistress. I will handle this, and prepare Harry for a new obstacle coming his way. It is hardly as though this is his first.”
“I wish it was,” Minerva said bluntly. “He should never have had to fight this war. But we might as well wish that he had never been targeted by Voldemort in the first place.” She sighed. “The village was wiped out entirely, both Muggleborns and Muggles tortured in-I can put the memory of the Auror’s report into a Pensieve for you if you wish. I can’t speak of it.”
“Perhaps I’ll ask for the memory later. I have work to do now, and there is nothing I would wish Harry to do about it in any case.”
“Yes. I think that’s best. Good night, Professor Malfoy.”
Narcissa nodded back to the Headmistress, and returned thoughtfully to her office. Yes, Voldemort had acted against one of her sons just as Idunna had. But he had done so much else that a slow-acting poison would not suffice for him.
Narcissa thought until she recalled something she had learned early on her training about blood links. It had been a small note in the margin of a much larger tome, one she had never pursued since her tutors said it was the kind of sympathetic magic that hardly ever worked.
But now…
Narcissa called one of the Malfoy house-elves to fetch her the book and one of the Hogwarts ones to bring her a mug of hot chocolate, and then settled down to drink and read. It was a weakness, one she had never trained herself out of, that she had trouble going back to sleep when her slumber had been so abruptly broken in on.
For now, she would use the time.
Part Seven.
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