Mirror Image

“Cissy! Go back home!”

Narcissa and Bellatrix had been close as children. Despite their age difference, they were the best of friends - Bellatrix used to dress Narcissa up as if she were a little doll, always in matching outfits. Always keeping Narcissa’s little hand tight in hers. They kept their distance from their middle sister, Andromeda, who never seemed to want to play with them. Never wanted to play pretend weddings or go spy on the Muggles in town. Never wanted to do the Pureblood lessons with them like dancing or place settings.

But age had been unkind to their bond. Narcissa was only seven when Bella went away to Hogwarts. By the time Narcissa herself was accepted to Hogwarts, Bella was in an arrangement with Rodolphus LeStrange, and she had new friends.

New friends, like Antonin and Thorfinn and Thoros and Barty.

“Where are you going every night?” Narcissa was used to watching Bella disappear in the middle of the night - Bellatrix had been sneaking out for years since they were teens - but she had hoped the habit had died now she was married. Tonight of all nights, when Narcissa was preparing for her own wedding with her sister, she had hoped Bella and Dolph would stay put. 

But Narcissa saw them. She saw them get up in the middle of the night, their little bathroom light glowing under the door before they emerged in black robes and slipped outside.

Narcissa would have been foolish not to follow them.

“Go back,” Bellatrix hissed, eyes wild and pleading. No matter how distant they had grown in the recent years, Bella cared for her younger sister.

“It is the night before my wedding, Bella,” Cissa said, just barely keeping herself from stomping her foot. “You are supposed to be at home with me, treating cold feet and setting my hair!”

“Go home,” Bellatrix repeated. “I will be there when you wake up and we will get ready together.”

“I won’t,” Narcissa said. “Tell me what you’ve been-”

“Now! I’m not asking!”

“-and Andromeda won’t even be-”

“Leave!”

“-you’re all I have left of my sisters!”

“What do we have here?”

It was as though the road, cool and shadowed, was now cold and dark. Properly cold and dark, like it were the dead of winter and not two months from Autumn. Bellatrix dropped like a stone to the ground, scrambling to bow and kneel and supplicate. Narcissa was frozen. In front of them was a man.

He was dressed in black robes, too, though his were nicer. He had a thinning head of hair, sickly-looking, and the skin of his head was pale and smooth. His eyes were brown, but when he moved forward under the moonlight, they glowed red.

His nose was upturned in an unpleasant way, nearly bending backwards on itself. The scent of charcoal and burning and smoke clung to him and enveloped Narcissa as a stabbing pain erupted behind her forehead. She gasped, her hands flying up to clutch at her own head, and she distantly heard Bella tell this man - her Lord - to please spare her baby sister.

“Ah,” the man said. “We have a bride before us. Looking for her sister before her wedding to Lucius Malfoy, the heir to the French House of power. How intriguing.”

Bellatrix was still kneeling, but there were tears on her cheeks. “Please, my Lord. Spare her.”

“She is a Pureblooded witch, marrying a Pureblooded wizard. They are to have a Pureblooded son. Why would I waste such valuable blood, Bella, and of your own tree? I am not so much a monster as to strike down one with so much… potential.”

There was something in his voice, in the way he said those words, that made Narcissa’s hackles rise. Bellatrix, caught between wanting to protect the only family member she had ever truly loved and wanting to serve her master, only cried harder.

Perhaps Narcissa didn’t understand. Perhaps it had been a threat.

Narcissa didn’t remember anything after that. She woke up in Bellatrix’s bed and Bella did her hair and her make up. They dressed for the wedding, and they left for the Malfoy estate, Rodolphus and Rabastian at their sides. It was there that Bella had pulled Narcissa aside and told her to leave. It was there that Lucius and his parents had given Narcissa the key to their estate in France, and where she and Lucius packed their bags.

Narcissa didn’t see her sister again until the day Bellatrix LeStrange stood trial for the torture of Alice and Frank Longbottom, and Narcissa had shielded a year-old Draco’s eyes while Lucius silencio’d their box. Bellatrix screamed the whole way out of the courtroom.

~~~

“Did you think,” Narcissa bit out. “That I would not recognize the Dark Lord Voldemort when he walked through my home?”

Draco was shaking and Theodore was holding him, leaving Hermione standing strong against Narcissa, their eyes locked on one another. Hermione was too used to being their shield, and they had just promised one another to be hers, but she would do this. She would do this one last time before the war.

“You said nothing,” Hermione said.
“Of course I said nothing!” Narcissa exploded. “He was a boy! When I met him, he was a monster, hardly a man. He was already starting to lose his body to destructive Magic, and this Tom Riddle was whole!”

“He is whole,” Hermione said calmly.

“He is whole!” Narcissa repeated. “He is whole, and he was Theodore’s cousin, and he was polite. You all seemed to be such a good influence on him and I foolishly thought- what a- you made me a fool, Hermione! Was anything you told us, me and Lucius, real? Was any of this real, or was this an attempt to get to our son all along?”

It was that - our son - singular and specific, that made Theo lose himself. An echoing sniffle and Hermione’s magic seemed to tear out of her. It swirled, the scent strong and sour and so specific, and Narcissa was speaking, but no words were audible.

“No,” Hermione said, wagging her finger. “You will not speak to us this way. You may question me and my loyalties, and you can berate me, and you can disown me. I will leave your house tomorrow and never ask that you feed me again. But you will never disown Theodore for the things I have forced upon him.”

Narcissa’s mouth snapped shut, and Draco and Theo both looked to their fierce, loving, protective bride, and then Narcissa nodded and the spell was broken.

“Where did he come from?” Narcissa asked, calm and cool again.

“The journal,” Hermione said. “When Draco and I were working on it, I discovered that basilisk venom doesn’t destroy a horcrux, it only seals it away.”

Narcissa’s face was suddenly very pale and very withdrawn. She didn’t give anything away other than shock and fear, but Hermione plowed ahead.

“We were able to repair the journal. When I realized- when we realized there was a group of Death Eaters looking to revive Voldemort, I realized we held a very important key to the puzzle. The journal was the first horcrux made, so it was the largest piece of-”

“The largest piece of his soul,” Narcissa whispered. Her fingers drifted across her lips in contemplation.

“The boys didn’t know,” Hermione said. “What I planned to do. I did it alone. He came back as himself from the 1940’s, still a boy and with more soul than he’s had for a long time.”

“You gave him your magic. You two are magical siblings now.”

“I didn’t know,” Hermione said. “But yes. We didn’t know the bond was as strong as it was until more recently, when Draco’s injury began to drain Theo and I. Toma figured it out.”

“Toma?” But she wasn’t asking about the magic anymore, she was asking about Toma. About this new identity.

“I didn’t know where he was when he came back,” Hermione confessed. “I raised him, and then he left me there. He- I don’t know how he- Theodore knows-” Hermione took a breath. “Theodore is the only one who knows how Toma came to be in his family’s care. His coming to stay here was as much a shock to you as it was to me.”

“How did my son become a Death Eater?”

Hermione swallowed thickly. “I asked him to,” she said. Behind Narcissa, Hermione could see Draco’s pleading eyes and Theo’s stunned face. “There is a war coming.”

“Precisely why I did not want him involved,” Narcissa said. “You three would have been sent away. With Tom if you insisted.”

“Tom isn’t leading the Death Eaters,” Hermione said. “But he is the missing piece. No one had him on their side last time. The Death Eaters didn’t have a smart, soulful Tom Riddle, they only had an unfeeling master.”

“So you want to win the war for yourselves?” Narcissa asked, eyebrows raised. She was always so smart, so quick. “You think you’ll win if you follow the young Dark Lord?”

“No,” Hermione said. “We only want to make things better.”

“Explain.”

Hermione wet her lips. “Death Eaters rose to power because they were proposing change, specifically change rooted in legitimate desire for change. They responded to fear about Muggles and the uptick of Muggle-on-Witch violence in those few years before the war.”

“They were terrorists,” Narcissa said.

“With a rhetorical ideology that resonated with people, even if those same people eventually fell off the Death Eaters’ bandwagon when they realized they were violence chaos mongers,” Hermione said. “The Order of the Phoenix established itself as a group to combat the violence of the Death Eaters, and to respond to the backlash of people who wanted to see stricter Muggle control. They too lost followers when they became radicalized. But the point remains that Wizarding kind has an appetite for change.”

Narcissa was quiet, staring at Hermione with an air of cautious interest. Like she wanted to know more, to hear the next part, but she was so afraid to ask. Hermione just pushed forward.

“So now we have three separate issues,” Hermione said. “We have a resurgence of the Death Eaters, the continued appetite for change, and a looming conflict as the Order of the Phoenix continues to push tensions higher.”

Narcissa nodded.

“I needed Tom Riddle,” Hermione said. “It wasn’t a question of raising him at all, it was a question of who would raise him first. By using the journal and my own magic, I shaped the iteration of Tom Riddle that came back to us. I took away the Death Eaters greatest asset, so their cause is crippled.”

“And the Order?”

“Is fighting a war against a phantom. Dumbledore was convinced that Tom Riddle had returned and was leading the Death Eaters, but it’s impossible to fight a man who isn’t there. His attacks on the Death Eaters were always just a little bit off, because they were never being led by Dumbledore’s familiar foil. Dumbledore could never really beat Antonin Dolohov, and he never thought he was trying to.”

“So they’re ineffective,” Narcissa mused. “And appear just as crazy as they did all those years ago.”

“And while the Order and the Death Eaters are fighting one another and making a scene,” Hermione continued. “The general public is still frustrated and eager to see change.”

“The articles,” Narcissa breathed. “Lucius and I wondered…”

Hermione smiled. “People are more likely to follow a leader for change if they’ve been looking for one for over three decades.”

“So you are hoping that, what? The Order and the Death Eaters destroy one another and leave Wizarding Britain for your own taking?”

“No,” Hermione said earnestly. “Toma and Draco and I are all a part of this war, and we will all be a part of the end to both the Order and the Death Eaters. When the war ends, there will be a power vacuum to fill, and then we all will have a place to step into.”

Narcissa hummed. Her ire was somewhat quelled now, but there was one thing still burning rage through her veins. “I understand all of that,” she said. “I understand why you brought him back, and what you hope to achieve during this war. But I do not understand why Draco was asked to join a terrorist group. How can you ask that of him? How can you ask him to brand himself with Dark, poisonous magic and then say you love him?”

Hermione’s face was pale and drawn, and she gaped for a moment.

“Because someone needed to be on the inside of the Death Eaters,” Draco said, and Narcissa whipped around.

He was standing now, Theodore looking out of place at his shoulder and without something to do. Theo’s hands were suspended over Draco’s shoulders, like he wanted to provide comfort but wasn’t even sure Draco needed it right now. To be fair to Theo’s strange predicament, Draco was nothing like the same man he’d just been. Where he’d been crumpled, ashamed and pained, he was now standing tall and firm and confident.

“Hermione never asked me to be a part of the Death Eaters,” Draco said. “But we all knew we needed reliable information from the inside. Hermione was already going to be the insider for the Order, and we couldn’t possibly send Theodore into that den of violence. And Toma has too much to do organizing all of us and playing Dark Lord and new-age thinker. It had to be me. There was no one else, and I will always, always protect Hermione and Theodore.”

Narcissa was staring at Draco with wide eyes, but he didn’t waiver.

“Don’t blame Hermione,” he said. “She isn’t to blame. She’s trying to make a new world for us all, and I’m going to do anything I can to make that endeavor easier.”

Narcissa pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything. In truth, she didn’t know what to think. She’d been thrown off the first time she saw Tom Riddle step through the floo trailing after Theodore, looking nothing like the man she’d met briefly before following Bellatrix. He’d been younger this time, and there was innocence in his eyes. He didn’t look so twisted.

And she’d let it all go - the moments she was suspicious of Toma’s influence on Hermione, the way they were closer than she might have expected for two people who only just met. Their bond was strange - neither romantic, nor friendly, but instead familiar. Hermione’s articles were influenced heavily by Pureblood traditions, and they seemed to be poignant for the times. Like she knew what the exact issues of the war twenty years ago had been.

And then Toma had replied to her, had given her credit as a Half-blood. Together, they had written an article advocating for complete, radical changes to the Muggle-born Inclusion Act.

It made sense, what they were saying. She could see Hermione’s plan, and it was brilliant. They could truly turn the tide of this new revived war. They could win it for themselves and for all of Wizardingkind.

Bellatrix had once torn the family apart, and the war had destroyed them. But where Narcissa had first seen a threat to her family with this new war looming, she now saw possibility. Danger, yes, but possibility.

Narcissa breathed. “I understand,” she said. “To be clear, I am displeased. I regret not saying anything about our houseguest earlier, and I regret not being closer to my son in these times.”

She fixed Hermione with a glare. 

“I regret your influence, unmitigated, on my family.”

Hermione’s head fell forward, her hair coming loose and tumbling about her head.

“But I understand. And I see the vision today that you all have for tomorrow. I can’t blame Hermione for Draco’s decisions, and I can’t blame her for Toma’s presence here. Hermione, you’re right. It is likely, without your intervention, that Tom Riddle would have returned to lead the Death Eaters again.

“And more than anything else, you make my boys happy. Draco and Theodore love you, and you are a part of this family. I don’t know what I can do to keep you all safe, and if I need to choose between Draco and Theodore’s safety in this war and anyone else’s, I will choose them.”

“Good,” Hermione said. “Toma and I can protect ourselves. The boys need you.”

Narcissa’s mouth twitched. “I have a feeling you and I approach war in much the same way.”

Hermione smiled, and after a moment, Narcissa joined her. “I will protect your family,” she said.

Narcissa nodded. “I know you will. Just don’t forget these three things. You are a part of this family, too. You aren’t alone. And you will win this war.”

~~~

Hermione stood in the bathroom and stared at her reflection. Over the last two years, her hair had grown long and thick, a benefit of Narcissa’s own hair potions and the products kept stocked in the Manor.

There would be no place for such long hair while she was on the run.

“Tilly,” Hermione called, quiet and wavering. The House Elf popped in not a minute later, wringing her hands.

“What is the Missus needing?”

“I need you to cut my hair,” Hermione said. “Make it even.”

When it was done, and her hair sat comfortably at her shoulders, Hermione slipped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. While she and the boys had been gone, Lucius and Narcissa had remodeled the second master’s bedroom for them all - they’d been moved into the Eastern wing of the Manor. Now, they had a sitting room, and a little library of their own, and a bedroom with a massive bed and a connecting ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet. The entire apartment was furnished in dark wood furniture and light, airy curtains and pale blue linens.

Hermione stepped out to find Theo and Draco already in bed. They were sitting against the headboard, Theo’s legs tangled in Draco’s, books in their laps. Hermione’s heart welled up with love, and she flushed with embarrassment.

Hermione had never thought of short hair as sexy on women, and she suddenly worried they would find her repulsive now. She shifted, tilting her head as if that would hide the sudden lack of length.

Theo looked up first. “Mya. You changed your hair.”

Hermione just shrugged. “Long hair gets tangled. I didn’t want… well. Living in a tent and all.”

Draco blushed. “It’s- Gods. Theo.”

“You look incredible,” Theo breathed. And then he flushed. “You always look incredible!”

“We like the long hair, too!” Draco said. “But this is-” he gulped.

“You look like a sexy librarian,” Theo said. “Come and scold us for being too loud, Mrs. Malfoy.”

Hermione threw her head back and laughed, properly and loud. She stumbled into bed, laughing the whole way, and Draco and Theo hauled her into their sides.

“Don’t laugh at us,” Draco growled.

“Yeah,” Theo said. “We’re not laughable!”

Hermione’s cheeks hurt from smiling. Suddenly, she felt something sad slam into her chest - she was going to miss her husbands, and she was going to think of them every day she was gone, and she was going to want to come home every day. She should have been planning to return to Hogwarts in two months, not planning to be on the run for the rest of the year. The rest of the year at least.

Hermione wanted to be able to settle into her new life with her husbands, to plan a family and a career and a life, to be a wife. She wanted to be a wife, not a soldier.

Theo caught her sudden change, and grabbed her chin. He pulled her to look at him, his green eyes boring into hers. He pressed a hard kiss to her lips.

“Stop worrying,” he said. “Please.”

“We’ll be here every time you check in,” Draco whispered. “And when this is over, we will be here waiting for you to come home.”

“Now forget about the war tomorrow,” Theo said, hands dancing across Hermione’s pajama’s hem. “And let us love our gorgeous wife.”