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Regulus Arcturus Black and Draco Lucius Malfoy had a lot in common, and Narcissa often thought she was the only one to see it.
In their own time they had both been the last heirs of the Black family, they had both joined a war far too young and neither had any choice in their affiliation during this war. Regulus had lived with her crazy aunt, and after her heir’s departure there had been no hope for the spare to run, Walburga had kept him close, had taken out any hint of his resistance with cruciatuses. Draco had seen the Dark Lord make himself at home in the manor he had grown up in, and she had been unable to protect him.
They were the youngest death eaters known, both receiving the mark at sixteen, they were the only people to have ever worn the mark while they were still students at Hogwarts. In both cases it was to make up for someone’s absence, Regulus had gotten the mark because the heir that Voldemort had wanted had ran away, so he had secured the spare. Draco had taken the mark in response to his father’s failure and imprisonment.
Narcissa knew them both so well, she remembered how kind Regulus had always been, she remembered the little boy who hid behind Sirius whenever he felt there were too many people in the room. She remembered the boy who had begged her to come to him when his brother had left him alone in Walburga’s house, and of course she had, she had held him that night. It was the first time she saw him lose his legendary composure since he’d entered Hogwarts. Regulus was a Slytherin through and through, able to manipulate everyone around him, so much that even she, who had been the person he’d been the closest to, hadn’t known what was going on in his head.
Regulus had died not long after she’d told him about being pregnant, she remembered he cried when she told him, he’d made her promise she wouldn’t raise her son the way they had been. She’d promised, she still wasn’t sure whether she’d kept her promise. Draco hadn’t grown the way they had, he didn’t know what it was to have your own parents use the cruciatus on you, had no idea that starving your child could be considered a normal punishment. But did it really matter when her child found himself in the exact same position her cousin had once been in ? Sixteen and the mark on his arm, she also knew that he didn’t tell her everything about what he’d been forced to do and how he’d been hurt.
She refused to see him die at eighteen though, she refused to see another boy be lost to a war they never wanted to fight, she refused to see her son meet the same fate her cousin had and she would do anything to ensure he didn’t.