lomonaaeren

Chapter Seven.

Part One.

Title: Narcissa Triumphant (8/13)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa
Content Notes: Angst, violence, minor character deaths, gore, torture, crack AU (Narcissa is an assassin)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Narcissa has a war on two fronts to fight, with Voldemort and with the Ministry. But when winning such wars is necessary to avenge her family and keep them safe, her enemies are the ones who will regret their actions.
Author’s Notes: Welcome to the seventh and final fic in the Narcissa series, the AU of DH. This really won’t make any sense at all if you haven’t read the other fics in the series, so do that first.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Narcissa’s Tactics

“Somehow I find myself continually dealing with you,” Scrimgeour told Narcissa as she settled into the chair across from his desk.

“Well, your retired Aurors do continue to trouble me,” Narcissa murmured, lowering her eyes and focusing them on her hands as she smoothed down her robes over her knees. “There would be no reason for me to appear here if not for Auror Moody.”

And that was nearly the truth. Narcissa’s activities to take down the Ministry didn’t require her presence in Scrimgeour’s office, after all.

“He’s not my Auror,” Scrimgeour began, then sighed and stopped speaking. “Well. At least I counseled that he should retire long past the point where he was retained by Fudge and Bagnold. And at least I told Minerva that she should find some other Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.”

“Now, she will have to,” Narcissa said. She did in fact have a solution in mind for Minerva’s problem, but she wasn’t about to offer it unless Minerva approached her. The Headmistress had had enough strains to the excellent understanding between them lately.

“True enough.” Scrimgeour folded his hands in front of him. “I heard you speak of suing the whole Ministry, or at least the whole Auror Department. I would counsel you against that, Professor Malfoy. It wasn’t us either giving Moody the authority to teach at Hogwarts or the authority to get away with actions against you, after all.”

“It was the power structure behind him that made him think he could get away with it for as long as he did.” Narcissa raised her eyes from her knees, and rejoiced in the way Scrimgeour flinched back from her. “I am told that even the Aurors who came to arrest him moved reluctantly.”

“Professor Malfoy—”

“And his prejudices towards the Dark Arts and Dark wizards are shared by plenty of other Aurors,” Narcissa went on relentlessly.

“Professor Malfoy—”

“I do not feel safe at Hogwarts without some kind of guarantee that Aurors who try something like this will suffer in the future,” Narcissa said, and cast her eyes down again and clasped her hands tighter until the knuckles turned white.

Scrimgeour sighed like Draco did when Narcissa had forbidden him to have purely sweets for breakfast as a child. “Professor Malfoy, I’ll do what I can, but you have to know that I can’t upend the whole power structure of the Aurors overnight.”

“If it’s serious enough, then you could.” Narcissa raised her eyes and assumed an angelic expression. “You would do it if the public safety was in danger, wouldn’t you?”

“There is no indication of that, though, since Moody has been arrested and hasn’t been working as a public Auror for years in any case.” Scrimgeour had leaned back in his chair and laid his hand on the tip of his wand projecting beyond his sleeve.

“Then I suppose I must concede to an argument my husband made that I was reluctant to pay attention to,” Narcissa said, and smoothed down her robes again.

“What argument is that, Professor Malfoy?”

Scrimgeour already looked as though he knew he would regret asking. Narcissa smiled at him. “Why, that the Ministry is prejudiced against Dark wizards in much the same way that Moody is and encourages those prejudices instead of fighting against them as they should.”

The Minister flushed. “Professor Malfoy—”

“After all,” Narcissa continued thoughtfully, “you would be speaking reassurances to anyone involved if Moody had targeted a Light witch, or if his rhetoric could be interpreted that way. You apologize immediately whenever any Ministry official says something that could be interpreted as supporting the Dark. And usually, you sack that person. Why are you not interested in doing more about Moody, I wonder?”

“He’s been arrested. What more do you want?”

“The public apology, so that I might reassure my family and certain students that we are treated as equal to Light wizards, would be appropriate.”

Scrimgeour appeared to be wrestling with himself. Narcissa waited. The man was, politically, no fool. He couldn’t foresee all the consequences that Narcissa had spent months planning for and laying the groundwork for, but he could at least understand that the Wizengamot wouldn’t like him doing this. Some people would hold him as weak for it.

But Narcissa was in his office, and they weren’t.

“Fine,” Scrimgeour conceded through his teeth. “Would you also like us to revise the arrests that Moody made when he was an Auror and see if any of them were motivated by his paranoia instead of—truth?”

That was something Narcissa had not foreseen, and she bit her lip to avoid laughing. She looked down with some more mock demureness. “That would, of course, be nice, Minister. And politic, I think.”

“Not as politic as you think, Professor Malfoy. You’re stirring up resentment if you do this that could easily be used against you. I’m not saying this as a threat. I’m just begging you to understand.”

Narcissa just smiled at him. In truth, the resentment would congeal and turn against Scrimgeour, for being the one who was wasting Wizengamot time—as they would see it—with this investigation when Moody had already been arrested. And if he couldn’t see that, why, he was not as foresighted as an ally of the Malfoys needed to be.

Scrimgeour finally sighed and turned around to scratch out a few words on a parchment sitting to the side of his desk. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Professor. And that your political instincts are as good as some people told me they were,” he added in a mutter that Narcissa probably wasn’t supposed to hear.

How sad for him that I did, Narcissa thought idly as she stood up and nodded to him. “Trust me, Minister, in matters such as these, they are very nearly flawless.”

Scrimgeour gave her a gloomy look. He must not think “nearly flawless” was enough. Narcissa patted his cheek and swept out of the room.

She wouldn’t claim perfection, because no one could. She had had to slit her throat in the last month to destroy a werewolf army, which alone deprived her of that appellation.

But as long as the burdens of her mistakes fell on others, then she thought she might claim the “nearly.”

*

“I’m dubious about this,” Minerva said, but she was muttering the words in a low voice as they stood by the fireplace in her office, waiting.

Narcissa smiled at the mantel and said nothing. In truth, she knew that Minerva would have liked nothing better than to hire some other Auror from the Ministry to be the Defense teacher. But the students themselves had led the protests at the notion, because the Ministry had wanted to send someone who had retired, the way Moody had, and the students evidently wouldn’t feel safe with someone like that

“What if he turned out the way Moody did?” Susan Bones had demanded, her eyes bright with a righteous fire Narcissa enjoyed seeing from the outside. She would never feel it herself, but she could admire it from a distance.

So Minerva had been forced to accept Narcissa’s suggestion of a replacement for Moody, and now they were waiting.

The fire turned green then, and Narcissa spun towards it. For once, she wasn’t inclined to hide the happiness that flooded her. She needed to see him, wanted to welcome him, and was in the perfect place to step forwards and take hold of Lucius’s hands as he came out of the fire.

“Husband,” she said, and tipped her head in so that she could lay her lips against his. Lucius’s hand tightened for a moment in her hair. Narcissa stepped back so that he could release the hold naturally, and turned him around with a hand on his arm. “Of course you know Headmistress Minerva McGonagall.”

“Mr. Malfoy.” Minerva looked as if she wished she was in cat form at the moment, so she could lash her tail. “I can’t be as pleased to welcome you to your post as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor as your wife is. I trust that you understand.”

“Perfectly, Headmistress,” said Lucius. Not even the ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You needed someone who had knowledge of the Dark Arts and the school’s procedures and could protect children. I can certainly do that.”

“Protect them?”

Lucius met the gaze with a calm that would have been impossible for him when he still bore the Dark Mark. Narcissa knew much more, now, about how it warped the mind and personality of the person who carried it. “I know that my record from the last war is not impeccable. But I have never harmed a child.”

“Teenagers,” Minerva said between her teeth. Narcissa was impressed she managed the words. “Some of the people you fought and killed were teenagers.”

“Still, of age. Seventeen.” Lucius remained calmly alert, as if he was waiting for Minerva to say something specific he could object to. But she turned around and yanked the contract Lucius would sign off the desk with such force that several pages of it flew out of order.

“Allow me,” Narcissa murmured. She waved her wand, and the pages of the contract flew back into the correct order. Minerva gave her a narrow, suspicious glance. She probably wanted to know where Narcissa had got the spell, which wasn’t commonly taught at Hogwarts.

Narcissa smiled and admitted nothing.

“Your contract, Mr. Malfoy.” Minerva sighed under her breath as she watched Lucius sign. “It will be somewhat confusing at first to have two ‘Professor Malfoys’ to refer to, but we’ve dealt with married couples who shared the same surname before. We’ll get used to it.”

There was nothing to be said to that, a mere minor complaint from a defeated arguer, so Narcissa smiled again and swept Lucius out of the office. He walked next to her with a quiet smile on his face, which changed to a broader one as they emerged from behind the gargoyle and into a corridor of the school proper.

“It seems like forever since I’ve been here,” he said softly, as he lifted his eyes to the ceiling and ignored the students passing them who stared a little. “I can’t believe that I never visited the school in my capacity as a governor more than once or twice. What was I thinking?”

“Nothing good,” Narcissa said, and tucked her hand under his elbow. “You weren’t always thinking clearly.”

Lucius nodded. He had told her that trying to revisit some of the decisions he had made under the Dark Mark had been like recalling decisions made in a dream. “Well, that’s been cleared up now, thanks to my darling wife.”

“Indeed.” Narcissa nodded to Susan Bones, who was giving them a faintly horrified glance, and swept past towards the stairs that led to the Defense classroom. “I’ll show you the place where Moody taught, although I’m unsure if you’ll want to use it.”

“Yes, he may have placed some traps there.” Lucius aimed his wand at the doorway as they arrived, and blew out his breath as several white sparks lit up around it and in the walls. “Didn’t he care that there would be children coming here?” he muttered.

“No, unfortunately.” Narcissa stood back and watched him disarm the traps with wide flexes of his wrist. “He probably thought that the pure of heart and mind wouldn’t be hurt. There are some Light spells like that.”

“Only if the ‘pure of heart and mind’ matches the picture in the mind of the caster.”

“That, too.”

Lucius had disarmed at least five traps before the first student came up the stairs. It was Pansy Parkinson, who stared slightly with her mouth open. Then she swallowed and said, “Mr. Malfoy is going to be our new Defense teacher, Professor Malfoy?”

“Yes.” Narcissa nodded slightly to the girl. She hadn’t joined in some of the nonsense the Slytherins had had about declaring for Voldemort in the face of all common sense. On the other hand, neither had she done anything that would show she was indisputably on Draco’s, or Harry’s, side. “I told the Minister that I wanted to feel safe from purely Light wizards in the castle, and of course other students objected when they offered to send a second retired Auror.”

Parkinson’s shoulders began to shake in near-silence. Then she said, “I look forward to your classes, sir.”

“Likewise to you as a student, Miss Parkinson,” Lucius said, and shot a glance at Narcissa as Parkinson went down the stairs again. “That many students managed the scores to be in NEWT Defense?”

“They had to switch to self-study in many cases, but yes.” Narcissa shrugged a little. “And Idunna, who taught last year, lowered her requirements to an Acceptable because she wanted to teach as many of them as possible.”

Lucius grunted a little and banished something that made a noise like a firework as it disappeared. “I can’t promise that all of them will pass the NEWT, especially with a mid-year change like this.”

“Lucius.” Narcissa leaned on his shoulder and waited until he looked at her. Then she let her hand stray along his jaw and watched his eyes dilate a bit. Some things hadn’t changed with the removal of the Dark Mark, no matter what else had. “I do want more of our students to do well on the NEWT exams, but that’s not the main reason you’re here.”

He nodded after a second and kissed her palm. “Thank you for reminding me of what is important, my love.”

Narcissa stepped back with a smile. “A service I would offer more often if more people asked me for it.”

*

“Having our father as a professor is bloody weird.”

“Stranger than having your mother as one?” Narcissa looked up with a faint smile as Harry hurled himself into the chair across from her. He was holding the Defense book that Lucius had ordered for the class and staring at it with a baffled expression.

“Yes, actually! You’ve been here a few years! I’ve got bloody used to you!” Harry waved the book around. “He had us read the first chapter, and then he went through and discussed everything the chapter left out and why we shouldn’t always trust experts! Even though he’s an expert! And one of the people he quoted was a Light wizard!”

“Your father has always wanted to be someone who appreciated wisdom no matter where it was found.”

Harry squinted at her. “Wanted to be, you said.”

Narcissa sighed with a slight movement of her hands. “Well, it is true that in recent years, he could not always fulfill that ambition. But now that he has the chance, he has returned to it with a vengeance. Is it at least better than the classes where Moody sat around telling you his war stories?”

“Yes.” Harry looked as if he was trying to suppress the smile that crept up his face next, but he didn’t manage it. “And you should see the expressions of the people I think expected him to just quote Dark wizards. It’s funny.”

Narcissa nodded. “I imagine it would be. Simply keep your eyes on your goals, however. You know that your father will teach you as well as he can, but the lessons that you use in the future will probably be mine.”

“You’ve taken my place as far as killing Voldemort goes, haven’t you?”

“I suspect the prophecy only said that it had to be you in the first place because of the Horcrux within you.” Narcissa somewhat mourned the fact that she had burned Dumbledore to death in phoenix fire. She would have given him a much slower death if she had known at the time what a Horcrux was and that he was aware of the one in Harry’s scar. “Now that that is gone, anyone could kill him who knows about the Horcruxes and how to deprive him of them.”

“What are we going to do next, Mother?”

“You are going to concentrate on giving Draco every happiness, defending yourself if someone attacks you, and getting excellent marks on your NEWT exams.”

“I meant what you’re going to do next about him, Mother.”

Narcissa smiled indulgently at Harry. “I know that you did. And I also know that you don’t need to worry about that, which means I can keep my plans to myself so that you don’t.”

Harry blinked. “You think I would get in the way if you told me what you plan to do?”

“No. As I said, my aim is preventing your mental distress.”

“Worrying about this will give me some mental distress, Mother.”

“I plan to destroy his remaining Horcrux and starve him to death. Then we can live happily ever after.”

“And the Ministry?” Harry cocked his head as he looked at her, his brow slightly furrowed.

“I will destroy it and replace it with something better.”

Harry thought about it, then shrugged. “Well, okay. As long as I know.”