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Narcissa Black was fond of saying she was born knowing exactly what she wanted, and, more importantly, how to get it. Cut free from the moorings of Hogwarts and the familiar, treacherous waters of Slytherin house and the structures of Sisterhood, it was left to her to set a path at her feet.
She knew what she wanted—to be master of her fate, designer of her own reality. She couldn’t do that from the confines of her parent’s house. She was a woman and knew far too well the limits and benefits of that curse.
And so she married Lucius Malfoy.
She chose him because he came from a family nearly as ancient and prominent as her own, and if she couldn’t be a Black, a Malfoy was nearly as good. They came from a world she understood, one she could navigate, if not with simplicity, at least with familiarity. She knew what was expected of her and what she could expect of it—this world of ambition and careful control.
Lucius had prospects and seemed to understand what a boon she would be for him. He was handsome as well, not enough to be vain, but enough to be admired. More importantly, he was put together and well-mannered. She could walk on his arm and keep her head held high.
It never occurred to her to love him.
Love was never part of the plan. She saw what love did to her sisters. Love was an ungovernable insanity. Love was scorched earth and betrayal. One sister as good as dead, lost to her world forever, and the other maddened by a man more idea than flesh. Love for a woman was servitude or loss. Narcissa would have neither.
What she had was control.
She watched warily as Lucius waded into the swelling tide, tying their star to a man with glorious ideas, but unpredictable methods. This would either bring them great heights or a precipitous fall. She left Lucius to the climb and focused herself on the potential tumble. Let him dream; she would plan.
She learned to speak to her husband in a way that never made it seem she was unmaking his decisions, never dictating, and yet defining all the same. Whispered and suggested all with a smile and an adoring look, But of course you know best…
She considered only then that she chose Lucius also for the weakness in him. She could only see the potential in it for herself. Her own strength would keep away the dangers. Or so she thought in her youth.
When Draco was born, she did not look upon his squalling, malformed face and feel a bolt of pure love. He was demanding and difficult, another variable to weigh—a burden. Yet he was also hers. She devoted herself out of duty, out of ownership.
A legacy.
She excelled at protecting her own. When the Dark Lord fell, fading into a violent night with little but a babe left behind as his vanquisher, Narcissa, ever light on her feet, pulled Lucius along, Draco cradled in her arms, finding new solid ground for them to thrive on. They would persist long after the Dark Lord withered into whispers and taboos.
Even more than persist, they prospered. Narcissa long since learned what Lucius could be trusted with and what needed be organized on his behalf.
But while they continued their climb, she was too distracted to realize that love could also be a near silent attack, a persistent flow that grain-by-grain undermined the sturdiest of foundations. With this kind of love, one day there was nothing under your feet but a vast underground sea, fathomless and unrelenting. Waiting to pull you down and under.
For the first time in her life, Narcissa ignored the risk. Ignored her greatest mistake in the smile of a boy who looked like his father, but was made of her. She told herself that she was not her sisters. She said this again and again to herself until Bella’s maddened face faded in her dreams, until Andromeda’s lilting laughter echoed its last.
She was the Black sister who would never stumble. Love would not be her undoing. Still, her apparent inability to have further children no longer seemed quite the curse she had felt it to be.
The Dark Lord rose again, both threat and promise, and Narcissa looked down at Draco’s brilliant, beautiful face and knew she would use any power, risk any outcome just to shape the world for him.
Sure enough, when the fates turned against them, when Lucius’ weakness condemned them, the Dark Lord set her precious child up to fall and fall disastrously. But as always, Narcissa knew what she wanted, and how to get it. She extracted a promise, not one in faith, but in blood and death. She would condemn a thousand allies for her son. This time, all she needed was one.
Draco went into the school to fulfill his duty. She remained behind and watched as her home became a prison, her husband nothing more than a disgraced shadow, his promise long since sucked away. He was useless to her. Worse than useless, tugging downwards like an anchor on a listing ship.
He looked to her to save him, but almost as if he had always known her devotion would only take him so far. She looked away and stood by her sister—mad, ruined Bella. She stood in the shadow and planned.
Draco survived, climbed his way up and over his impossible odds, and she had never been more proud. But the cost was dear, her child broken and trembling, even as he lifts his chin above it.
She could see it so clearly, that this would destroy him given enough time. The Dark Lord reigned here now, but when she looked into her child’s face, all she could see was death.
The wheel turned, ever on, and the inevitable battle finally found them all. She filled her son’s hand with her own wand, leaving herself the most exposed and weak she had ever been. It allowed her to blend into the background, to hover near the useless lump that Lucius had become, and no one looked at her. No one thought of her. Two wandless wizards and their fallen house.
Malfoys, they snarled with disgust, not even bothering to whisper.
They seemed to have forgotten. Narcissa was a Black first. She simply waited, gaze down and hands poised. Ready.
The boy, that despicable, arrogant boy, walked into his own fate, standing before the Dark Lord with a firmness of conviction that Narcissa recognized as a reflection of her own, and the whole world seemed to tilt.
In a haze, the boy fell. But the lord as well, Bella’s screams crashing against the trees.
In sharp clarity it came to Narcissa, a cutting, painful truth like glass shards under her skin. The Dark Lord, struggling to his feet, weak, weak, weak, was no longer simply the most powerful wizard of all time, a shining beacon of a promising future where things would be different. All she saw was a man standing between her and her son, their future.
A man stumbling to even stand.
Her feet move her toward the crumbled boy on the forest floor. Her mind simply whispered please, please, please, not knowing what she wished most for. Just a path, a way.
No matter who might give it to her.
Kneeling down over the boy, she pressed her hand to his chest, felt the telltale thump of his life. Her nails dug into his skin as she thought of the life of her own son, how she would do absolutely anything. Sacrifice anyone.
So she saved the life of a boy she loathed, spun the wheel to her advantage, damn the risk, the consequences, the outcome.
She looked up into the face of the Dark Lord and lied. “Dead.”
She was of so little consequence, this wandless witch, that he never even deigned to taste her truth.
Narcissa decided he deserved whatever fall was coming for him.
They walk up to the castle, this solid, wonderous place she had loved so well—now broken and moaning. Once again it gave her what she needed to breathe, her son out on those steps—alive and bruised and conflicted and alive.
She held her hand out to him and simply said, “Come, Draco.”
She let the Dark Lord touch and hug her son as if he owned him, bask in his supposed victory. When Draco reached her side, she clasped him to her and gradually moved them further and further back in the crowd.
When the boy inevitably rose, not dead after all, when chaos reigned and the final battle raged out its last tumultuous act, Narcissa took her wand back from her son. She did not lift it, but rather took Draco’s hand in her own and turned her back on the Castle.
She walked away, her son in tow. She didn’t look back to see if her husband followed. Didn’t care. With Draco’s shaking, clammy hand in her own, she had all she needed of this world.
She would be content in her knowledge that she was right all along. Only a foolish woman allowed herself to love.
And she, the greatest fool of all.