Title: Narcissa Militant
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Content Notes: AU, crack, minor character deaths, violence
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa
Summary: AU. Narcissa is actually the source of the Malfoy family's wealth—and not because she inherited the Black fortune, either. She's an in-demand spy and assassin. But now she's retired, and intent on using all her skills to make sure her baby boy gets what he wants. If that's Harry Potter, then Harry Potter he shall have.
Author's Notes: This is the first of seven chapters. It is not meant to be taken at all seriously.

Narcissa Militant

"Mum! I met a boy in the robe shop! He's going to Hogwarts too!"

Narcissa dropped a kiss on Draco's head and guided him gently towards Ollivander's. He would, of course, have to choose his own wand, but Narcissa and her knives had explained to Ollivander that the wands he thought most likely to be compatible with Draco would be waiting in boxes near the front of the shop.

"That's nice, dear. Who was he?"

Draco opened his mouth, then frowned and shook his head. "I don't actually know. He didn't tell me his name. He just said his parents were a witch and a wizard."

"That's more than acceptable," Narcissa told Draco, and squeezed his shoulder when he looked up at her for reassurance. "Now, let's get you a wand. I think you might have one with a unicorn hair core."

Draco's mouth dropped. "Dragon heartstring is more exciting."

"Then it will be dragon heartstring."

Draco tilted his head back to look up at her. "How do you know, though? I heard the wand chooses the wizard. So what happens if one with a core of dragon heartstring doesn't actually choose me?"

"Mother will take care of it." Narcissa stroked his hair. "Mother will take care of everything."

And she did. There might be less that could be done to threaten wands than human beings, but the wands had enough magic to recognize a threat to carve them in half, and in the end Draco was the proud owner of a hawthorn wand with a dragon heartstring core that played musical notes when he waved it as a test. He beamed up at her, and Narcissa kissed his cheek again, and caught sight of a man from the corner of her eye who had been following them from Madam Malkin's, staring at Draco. Now he was staring through Ollivander's window. Narcissa smiled and stepped outside to talk to him.

She did have to cast the charm that buried the body more quickly than usual. It was harder to be efficient and quiet about that in the middle of Diagon Alley. But it was accomplished, and she went back home with Draco waving his wand through the air and practicing Lumos. It lit up on the third try, after Narcissa laid her hand on her own wand and gave the hawthorn one a meaningful smile.

Draco didn't talk much more about the boy from the robe shop, other than to comment on his green eyes. Narcissa only nodded in response. Right now, Draco didn't sound as if he was that interested in the boy.

If that changed, Narcissa would be ready. There couldn't be that many green-eyed wizarding boys heading to Hogwarts for their first year.

"Have you read Draco's letter?"

Narcissa pulled back from cutting the dummy's femoral artery and frowned at Lucius. "Of course I have. Draco comes before my training, you know that." She kicked the dummy's leg from under it and watched in satisfaction as it collapsed in a spreading pool of blood. She'd got better at creating realistic training dummies as the years passed.

Lucius cleared his throat. Narcissa smirked at him from over her shoulder. She knew what the pink tint to his cheeks meant.

"When I'm done deciding what I should do," she said, and passed him with a pat on his arm.

Lucius spun to watch her as she put away the bloodied knives and picked up her wand again. "Do you have to practice the shield that deflects bullets?"

"Of course I do. What happens if Draco decides that he wants to take over the Muggle world someday? I'll have to be prepared." Narcissa cast the skin-tight shield around herself and then the spell that created dummies with Muggle weapons. Lucius prudently ducked out of the room.

When all the dummies were cut into small splinters, he stepped back in. "What are you going to do about Draco's request?"

"Get him Harry Potter's friendship, of course." Narcissa cast yet another spell that dried the blood in her hair and made it drift to the floor in black flakes. The house-elves would take care of that. "I did consider killing the boy, but he could hardly befriend Draco if he was dead."

"No," Lucius agreed, staring at her in fascination.

"And it would upset Draco. So I am going to give Mr. Potter a reason to think better of the Malfoys." Narcissa held out her hand and beckoned. "Come here, Lucius."

He moved towards her with alacrity.

Narcissa spun smoothly to the side, her spell cutting off the reaching talons of the werewolf Greyback had lent her. She shook her head as she watched her next one slice his neck, and the third take off the head completely. She hadn't specifically asked Greyback for members of his pack who were so wolfish they had their intimidating features even in human form, only for ones he wouldn't mind losing, but this was all to the good for her purposes.

She turned around and gently crouched down in front of the Potter boy, who was staring at her with wide eyes. Draco had told her, among the many other complaints he made about Harry Potter, that he liked to wander in the Forbidden Forest. It had been easy to set up an ambush that Narcissa would "save" him from.

"Are you all right, Mr. Potter?" she asked him.

Potter opened his mouth as if he would say no, and then looked over her shoulder at the blood soaking into the leaves. "You saved my life."

"Yes." Narcissa absently wiped off the blood still clinging to one hand on her robes. "Do you know who I am?"

He looked her in the eye and silently shook his head.

"Narcissa Malfoy, Draco's mother."

His eyes widened. Yes, green, just as Draco had described. A pretty color, too. Narcissa could see why Draco would be so smitten with him. "But Draco is—"

"My son," Narcissa interrupted, before he could say something she would have to kill him for. "But he's very sorry about the bad start that you got off to." She had sent Draco a gently-worded letter when he'd told her about the insult he'd given to Weasley. She had raised a smarter son than that. "And he did tell me that he would be upset if something happened to you. I've been keeping an eye on you from a distance."

To her surprise, it was her last statement that seemed to garner Potter's attention the most. "There are—charms that can let you do that?"

Narcissa nodded. "And other spells. They let me know when you were in danger and when you hurt yourself, such as when you cut your hand in Herbology the other day, and they told me of your emotions spiking when you were anxious or upset. Why?"

Potter's mouth was a tight, dramatic line. "Could someone use them in the Muggle world?'

"Not all over the Muggle world. They would have to be placed on a certain, specific building, and the outside of the building imbued with magic. But then, yes, they could be used. Why?"

Potter looked slowly up at her. "Why did no one ever come?" he whispered, but even though the words were soft, they seemed to burst from behind a dam. "If they could know I was upset and hurt, why didn't they come?"

Narcissa was hardly the type to let information pass her by. Her voice was a gentle purr as she folded her hand over Potter's shoulder and whispered, "Tell me."

Narcissa smiled over at Harry and Draco, their heads cuddled together as they opened the presents under the tree. Of course Draco's pile was larger than Harry's, but Narcissa had bought plenty for him as well. Draco would be upset if his friend was treated as less than he was.

Lucius gave her a pained glance. Narcissa sighed, stood, and stepped outside the room, turning around as Lucius followed her into the corridor. "Yes?"

"Is this necessary?"

Narcissa cast without verbalizing the spell. In a second, Lucius's hands were bound together behind his back, he had toppled so that he was leaning on the wall instead of balancing on his feet, and he was staring up at the ceiling. Narcissa stalked towards him and used her wand to tickle his throat.

"Lucius. What did we talk about when we agreed to wed, you and I?"

"Um—I would give you children. And you would—you would give me—"

"Everything else," Narcissa agreed, a sense of humor returning to her. It was adorable, in a way, that Lucius still had trouble speaking of his desires all these years later. "Yes. I have kept my side of the bargain, have I not?"

"I'm sorry I couldn't give you more than one child, Narcissa."

She cocked her head in silence. It wasn't his fault, truly, so much as the fault of some of the spells that her mother had cast on her when she was young, trying to force Narcissa into the mold of the "perfect" Black daughter. Her mother had been Narcissa's first kill, and still one of her most satisfying. "Not your fault. But I have kept my side of the bargain." She waited for him to nod. "And you know how I feel about my son. And how I'll keep him safe. And what it means for your following of the Dark Lord."

"I know. But…Harry Potter living in our house, not at his Muggle relatives'?"

"I took care of his Muggle relatives."

"You killed them?"

The voice came from behind her. Narcissa turned around, a bit angry with herself that she hadn't kept her conversation with Lucius private enough. But Harry was only standing and staring at her, and Draco had a hand on his shoulder in support.

Even though Draco looked shocked, he still had the relaxation of forming lines in his face that meant he was happier than he had been in years. Narcissa had never realized he was missing a friend, or she would have provided him one before now. But she was happy enough that things had worked out this way.

"No," Narcissa said. It was true. "I only explained that you were going, and they were to tell the truth to no wizard who tried to question them." She had reinforced the command with spells. Not even someone armed with Legilimency or Veritaserum was going to get the truth out of the Muggles now.

And if she had added a few other spells in revenge for what her son's friend had suffered there, it wasn't like she had left the Muggles with the ability to speak about that, either.

"Oh." Harry shuffled. Then he took a deep breath and asked. "Were there monitoring charms on the house?"

Narcissa hesitated, different impulses warring inside her: to keep secrets, to ease the conscience of her son's friend, to spare Draco from a hard truth, to make sure that no lies could ever trap her. Then she said, "Yes."

"Oh," Harry said again, and closed his eyes. Narcissa knew she had confirmed his fear that someone had been watching over him, but had never cared enough for him to intervene.

"There are lots of monitoring charms here," Draco said loudly, not understanding the whole situation, Narcissa knew, but still working to clarify it, and comfort his friend. "It gets tiring sometimes. Anyway, Harry. Let's go open the rest of our presents! You never opened that one with the handwriting I don't recognize." And he tugged Harry back into the drawing room, and Narcissa heard them plump down near the tree.

"You did take care of it the right way," Lucius said, not much of a question in his voice.

"Of course." Narcissa leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Then she breathed into his ear, "And I'm going to make sure that you're taken care of, once we've opened the rest of the presents and Draco and Harry are properly occupied."

Yes, his blush was still adorable.

"Harry almost died, Mum!"

Narcissa touched Draco's cheek and sat down next to him in the hospital wing. Because they didn't want anyone realizing they had taken over as Harry's guardians, she'd had to sneak her way into Hogwarts, and thus to Draco's side and Harry's bed. "Tell me what happened, darling."

From the fragmented way Draco told it—a troll, and a chess set, and a mirror, and a Stone—Narcissa didn't think she was getting the whole story. It was only what Harry had been able to tell him before he passed out from the healing potions, and Narcissa trusted that she would get a much better recollection from Harry later. But she had heard enough to know that Harry hadn't gone into the maze of traps on his own. There were two other Gryffindors who had gone with him.

And one of them was resting in the hospital wing right now, unconscious himself, but only in regular sleep, not from healing potions. Narcissa stepped lightly up to Ron Weasley's bed and woke him with a shake of his shoulder.

"Wh—"

There was also a hand over his mouth, which prevented him from shouting out. Narcissa delved easily, lightly, into his mind. She had learned knife-strokes of more than the merely physical variety.

What she found confirmed her suspicions. The children had been hearing little "hints" about Nicholas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone all year, and the traps protecting it were absurdly simple. Harry had kept the secret from all of them because his friends had demanded he do so, afraid they were "losing" him to the Malfoys. That was something she would have to talk to him about.

But first, she had something to do about the absolutely absurd manipulation Harry had been subjected to.

Narcissa stood and let Weasley slip into sleep and forgetfulness, with the aid of a carefully-placed Obliviate. Then she walked back to Draco and bent down to touch her lips to his forehead. "I'm going to go take care of something, darling."

"Something that will benefit me?"

Narcissa smiled slowly. He had always believed her when she said that, and it was true. She had never failed him. But this was the first time he had stared back at her with that sharp spark of intelligence in his eyes.

"Yes, my loved one. Always."

Draco looked down at Harry motionless in his bed, and swallowed. "Thank you, Mother. Sometimes I think that—he's all I have."

"Your only friend," Narcissa said, and caressed his cheek with her wand. "But don't forget that you have a family."

He flung his arms around her, and Narcissa let him rest his head against her chest and breathe in her scent. Then she gently pulled him towards the door. There were a few people, mostly Gryffindors, who would become restless if they found him here.

She did hear his last words as he left the hospital wing and turned towards the dungeons.

"Thank you, Mother."

Narcissa stroked the back of his head—still as soft as when he had lain on her chest, newborn, and she had known she would never love anyone as much—and then slipped away down the corridor, remembering what she knew of portraits, and phoenixes.

Lucius choked on his tea when he saw the headline.

"Narcissa, you did not kill the Headmaster."

Narcissa glanced up from where she was carefully eating the toast that the house-elves had put in front of her. Her burned, bandaged hands would have made holding most ordinary breakfast food difficult. "No, I didn't."

"Then what—"

"I took control of his phoenix and made it kill him."

Lucius slumped back in his seat and covered his eyes with his hand. "All right. What in the world convinced you this was a good idea?"

Narcissa told him about what she had discovered in Weasley's memories, and Lucius's face grew thinner and paler and more pinched as he listened. Then he glanced at the newspaper and ended up nodding slowly.

"I still wish that you'd discussed this with me before you did it. But I can understand why you felt you needed to."

Narcissa stood and leaned over to kiss him. "Thank you, dear. I promise that later, when our boys have exhausted themselves with playing, we'll see about rewarding that patience and loyalty of yours." She squeezed his arm, and listened to him groan, and went outside with a smile to watch Harry and Draco circle on their brooms.

Harry saw her and shouted happily. Draco did the same thing, but the smile he gave her was more secret, more private, more compelling and dark.

Narcissa smiled more widely and praised their skill when they called down to her.

It is nice to be understood.