[Wednesday one-shots]: Narcissa Triumphant, Lucius/Narcissa, H/D, PG-13, 7.12/7

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eleven.

Part One.

Title: Narcissa Triumphant (12/13)
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 Twelve—The Fire of His Soul

Even as she dived and dodged out of the way, Narcissa was frantically sorting through her memories from her discipline and her many jobs, trying to remember where she had seen something like that white fire streaked with gold. It reminded her of certain kinds of Light magic, but Voldemort wouldn’t have that sort of ability left—

And then she remembered what she had heard of Light magic when she was young enough that she could have dedicated herself to it or a certain other path. She had chosen the discipline of the assassin instead. But her parents had made sure that she understood those other paths.

Light magic involved a dedication of the whole soul, without a splitting into other paths. It was one reason that Blacks were particularly unsuited to it.

But if Voldemort had chosen to dedicate the whole of his being to survival, or to defeating her—

He could not have achieved Light magic, but he could have achieved something like it.

The torrent of fire died. Narcissa found herself on her feet on the other side of the room, pressed up against one of the crumbling walls of the manor.

Voldemort was panting as he placed his hands on the arms of the chair and struggled to his feet. Narcissa watched him narrowly. Yes, her curse had still deprived him of most of his might, and the destruction of the Horcruxes would have done still more.

But it might not matter. If he had gathered up all the remnants of his will and his cunning and his body and set them on fire…

A great deal would depend on what exactly he had managed to burn.

Still dodging and spinning away from the next torrent of fire when it came, Narcissa studied the colors, and managed to dredge up old memories of Light magic from the books that she had studied when she was a child. The Black family believed in exposing their children to all kinds of reading until they determined where their affinity lay.

White and gold. The colors of the soul. Narcissa was sure at last. But part of her wanted to doubt. How could he have enough soul left to manage that much fire?

Unless the pieces of his soul had come back to him when the Horcruxes were destroyed. Narcissa had presumed they would perish with their vessels, but that had perhaps been a stupid idea. Still, no other wizard before this had dared to make multiple Horcruxes, and most of them had died soon after their single one was destroyed.

No research existed on what would happen to the pieces of cracked and wandering soul. Perhaps they had indeed returned to Voldemort, and while he could not manage to reabsorb them completely without expressing remorse for his murders, still he had managed to join them to his master soul with some weak stitches.

Narcissa sighed. This was a very inconvenient time to find this out.

“Do I bore you, Mrs. Malfoy?” Voldemort’s voice was hoarse, but his movement more fluid. He didn’t bother reaching for his wand, which said that he understood what he had done. His face bore an unpleasant smile that Narcissa judged for its ugliness. Even if he hadn’t been able to eat in months, he might have taken care of his teeth. “I would not want that. Shall I give you something else to face?”

“On the whole, no,” Narcissa replied, but Voldemort showed his rudeness by ignoring her and stretching out one hand.

The air shimmered for a second, and Narcissa thought he might manage to summon fire from it. But then it snapped back into place. Voldemort stared at his fingers in silent bewilderment.

“Simply because you are capable of one form of wandless magic does not make you capable of all of them,” Narcissa remarked into the silence.

Voldemort spun to face her. “Shut up, witch!” he screamed, and then belched more fire at her.

“Nor good at insults,” Narcissa added from near the roof. She had sprung up and snatched a hold in the walls, where something had once hung, perhaps a picture. She perched on it now with the aid of a charm in her clothes that never failed and drew the Resurrection Stone forth. It looked as though her original plan to torment Voldemort would not work, but he had showed her something that would.

She turned the Resurrection Stone over once, and the room shuddered and seemed to slam back and forth like a Muggle revolving door that Narcissa had once seen for a moment.

“What are you doing?” Voldemort’s voice was breathless. Narcissa looked down to see him clawing at his throat. “What are you—”

And then the first piece of soul flowed out of his throat.

This one looked exactly like a sixteen-year-old boy, his eyes dark and his hair tousled and his Slytherin school uniform neat and pressed. Narcissa was certain that he must be the shade from the diary, although she had never seen him to be sure. All the other Horcruxes had been made later in Voldemort’s lifetime.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the boy Riddle said to Narcissa, folding his transparent arms.

“Summoning you with the Resurrection Stone,” said Narcissa, and let the Hallow dangle from her fingers for a moment. Riddle’s eyes focused on it hungrily. Then he shook his head and scoffed.

“The Deathly Hallows are no more than a legend.”

“This is a real legend, then,” Narcissa said, and flipped the Stone into the air. It soared in a high arc and past the choking Voldemort, into the suddenly-physical hands of the specter. Riddle stared at the Stone, sneering down at the symbol before he flipped the Stone over.

The wrong way.

The Stone glowed brighter for a moment, as though someone had dipped it in magnesium. Then Narcissa felt a ghost wind blow past her. It was going the wrong way, too, and for a moment, she saw it, as one could never see the real wind, a stream of white and leaden colors.

The Riddle-shade screamed.

Voldemort vomited another stream of fire at the same moment, and Narcissa skipped skillfully out of his way, never taking her eyes from the drama happening in front of her. Riddle was fighting, his hands locked on the Stone as if on either side of a door that had been opened and which he didn’t want to fall through.

But the ghost wind shoved at his back, and the Stone blazed with its oddly resplendent light, and the Riddle-shade vanished.

A good thing, too, Narcissa noted, because something like a flayed baby had bobbed out of Voldemort’s mouth this time and was taking the place that the boy Riddle had stood in a moment before.

Narcissa felt distantly sorry for the tiny thing, as sorry as she could ever feel for a piece of Voldemort. She supposed it was probably the Horcrux-shard that had been inside Harry. It was so small that she could see through it, and blood dripped continually off it, and it howled with a tinny sound.

“What is this?” Voldemort demanded, probably the question the Horcrux-baby would ask if it could.

“Justice,” Narcissa said, wondering if the Stone would consume this shade or not. Technically, Riddle was the one who had turned the Stone and set the ghost wind flowing, not this baby. But Narcissa was prepared to shove it into the Stone if she had to.

Instead, the Stone’s light reached out and embraced the baby like a pair of loving arms. Narcissa didn’t see much of it before the shade dissolved and vanished, but she did hear the tinny crying stop. She smiled. She supposed the Stone had as much mercy as this.

Always assuming that the baby doesn’t go on to some worse fate than floating around in the air while looking flayed and crying, Narcissa thought, and then shrugged. It wasn’t a baby she had flayed.

“You will pay for this,” Voldemort wheezed, his hands braced against the floor as if he was going to climb to his feet and smite her. Narcissa was looking forward to how he would do that, since he couldn’t even stand right now. “I have more shards of soul…”

“I know,” Narcissa murmured as she watched a well-defined shade stalk out of his mouth. “And one is leaving you.”

The shade who confronted her now tried to stare at her with aristocratic disdain, but Narcissa had excelled at those lessons in the discipline as she had in all the others, and it didn’t manage very well. But it eyed the Stone, and said, “I know that. You will not catch me with that.”

“Ah, you must be the Horcrux that was in the ring,” Narcissa greeted it. “Tell me, what was it like to make the ring?”

“It was magnificent. The deaths of my relatives…they were only Muggles, of course, but it was pure revenge.”

“How interesting. I’ve never met anyone before who found pure revenge. Most people seem to take it and then tire of it. I myself like it, but I’ve never found the ecstasy that you have. Will you describe it to me?”

The shade gave her a condescending smile. It looked as if he was only sixteen, like the Riddle in the diary, but his eyes seemed darker. “Of course. It was a dark and stormy night—” He stepped forwards, gesturing with one hand.

At which point the Stone, which had been hovering nearby, ate him.

Narcissa raised an eyebrow at Voldemort. “I never realized how literally your pride would be your downfall. Don’t you find this all a bit embarrassing?”

Voldemort responded with an enormous heave that made his arms writhe like the tentacles of some sea-beast, and managed to make his way to his feet. His eyes were crazed. Narcissa studied him, and decided that his skin was also more translucent, and that he had hollows in his cheeks that hadn’t been there before. (She did feel a little sick at how well that proved she knew him, of course).

“You will die,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Eventually. I haven’t decided to pursue any mad paths the way you did to make myself immortal.”

Voldemort lunged forwards with a cry so thin and high that Narcissa thought of it immediately as the howl of a wounded wolf. This time, although he seemed to mean to bring forth fire, what erupted from him was a shade that was as bone-pale as he was and as tall, but looked more human.

Probably the diadem’s shade, Narcissa thought. It was younger than Voldemort would have been when he turned Nagini into a Horcrux, if she was right about the timeline.

And honestly, hadn’t she been right about everything else?

The Stone darted towards the shade, but it lifted a hand, and a whirling blue light appeared in front of it. The Stone hissed, or made a sound like it, and flew over to hide behind Narcissa. She tilted her head and could just make it out hovering behind her left shoulder blade.

“You’re not helpful,” she told it. It made a spluttering hiss like a treed kitten.

“I am the most magnificent,” the older shade in front of her announced. “I am the most powerful version of Lord Voldemort.”

“Oh.” Narcissa nodded over its shoulder. “More powerful than the one that’s back there?”

The shade turned around just as Voldemort vomited fire again. It glowed less brightly than before, because he has less soul to power it now. And it struck the shade instead of her, which made the ghost vanish in a blaze of brilliance.

“That was perhaps not all that intelligent of you,” Narcissa said consideringly. She was trying to balance between the personal liability to Voldemort himself and the convenience to her. But overall, it came down on the side of less intelligence.

Voldemort would perhaps have answered, but there were two spirits working their way out of his throat right now. One was a wavering, snake-shaped blob. Probably the Horcrux that he had placed in Nagini, then. The other was a young man with flaming eyes who folded his arms and said, “I am less than impressed that he was defeated by a woman.”

“I assume you must be the spirit that called Salazar Slytherin’s locket home, then.”

“That’s right.” The shade preened for a moment. “What gave it away? The style? The grace?”

“No, the fact that you if you had lived in the cup that belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, you might have been less insulting about women.”

The shade dropped his hands to his hips and glared at her. He was older than the boys from the ring and the diary had been, but still rather ridiculously young. The snake hissed something next to him, but the human shade didn’t bother to reply. “You know nothing, woman.”

“I know that the two of you leaving your original body means that you will have very little soul left for the soul-fire, now.”

“Why should I care about that? His survival is not my survival.”

“With the locket destroyed, why wouldn’t it be?” Narcissa asked, mildly interested. No one had done that much of a study on the perceptions of Horcruxes, as far as she knew. It was also why no source she had found said that the pieces of soul went back to the original owner.

The shade paused for a long moment. Then it said, “I can survive on my own,” but it sounded uncertain.

“I’m sure you can,” Narcissa said, making sure to keep her tone as helpful and condescending as possible, and was rewarded when the shade stared at her.

“Can’t I?” The shade stared down at the snake next to it, then turned and walked back towards Voldemort.

Who vomited more fire and destroyed it. Narcissa sighed from her position on a long chain that must once have hung a chandelier from the ceiling. “Really? Is it that easy to convince you to destroy your own soul?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.” Voldemort’s voice was low and hoarse, and he reached up and clawed at his throat for a moment as if he was trying to bring some obstruction out of it. Narcissa assumed it would be the last piece of the soul, the one that had been in Hufflepuff’s cup. “I am destroying my rivals. I shall have none.”

“Your rivals are pieces of you?” Narcissa shook her head. Well, she supposed it fit with the way that Voldemort had made multiple Horcruxes. He didn’t seem to have considered that there would be drawbacks to this plan, or that the Horcruxes might have their own perceptions and goals. They had simply existed as backup plans for his main soul.

“Of course! They are—”

The last bit of soul fell out, a fiery-eyed man who had a ghostly wand. Narcissa perked up. This was a bit more interesting. She also felt the Resurrection Stone float out slowly from behind her back, although it seemed to be pointed at the snake instead of the man with the wand.

“You are the one who has plagued our plans,” said this shade, his voice like a sigh in a windy hollow. He began walking towards her, his wand turning slowly from side to side like Lucius in quest of tea. “I will kill you.”

“So far, your boasting has not matched reality,” Narcissa told him kindly. “I don’t mean to discourage you, you understand. It’s simply the truth.”

“That is because you have not seen what I can do.” The man pointed his transparent wand at her. “I am the last. I am the greatest.”

“Are you?” asked Narcissa mildly. “I think the man behind you would disagree.”

This time, Voldemort didn’t even wait for the shade to turn around before he spat the fire. This last ghost endured for a moment longer than the others, struggling against the fire to the point where Narcissa thought he might actually break free. But in the end, he faded and succumbed like all the others.

Narcissa glanced to the side, but the snake shade was also gone. The Resurrection Stone was floating cheerfully in midair, as though it had taken care of more of their enemies than it had.

“What are you doing?” Voldemort snarled as he stalked slowly towards her. “The rivals and the distractions are gone. You are alone with Lord Voldemort.” He spoke as if the words ought to be the equivalent of “raped by wild boars.”

“Waiting,” Narcissa responded.

“Waiting for what?”

Narcissa didn’t see the point of repeating herself, so she simply shrugged and stood there. As Lord Voldemort drew in his breath to breathe another blast of soul-fire, large cracks appeared, winding through his body. He didn’t appear to notice until he huffed and no other blast of flame emerged.

When he stared down at himself in horror, Narcissa explained the way a Healer would, “Without the rest of your soul, the only thing you had to set on fire was the small portion of it remaining in your body. And now you don’t have any weapons against me. Or any bodily integrity left, come to that.”

Fractures met each other as they spread through Voldemort, and when they touched, they destroyed the flesh in between. Lord Voldemort exploded, piece by slow piece, and was less than dust when he began to drift to the floor. The Resurrection Stone came solicitously forwards to collect what was left.

“I tried to tell him,” Narcissa said. “Although admittedly not very hard.”

She gathered the Resurrection Stone and turned it the correct way, dissipating the power, then turned and walked out of the decaying manor. As an afterthought, she tossed an ordinary fire spell over her shoulder that would consume the whole thing in an inferno of flames.

Unlike some deceased Dark Lords she could name, she was careful.