'Cause us traitors never win
She stared at Peters face with parted lips until Lucius nudged her back into reality. How different Peters face was from the face of the schoolboy whom she had given detentions at any chance, whom she had scoffed at with her friends because he hung out with Sirius, her disgraced cousin.
Peter was betraying his best friends. He was betraying her cousin. And Lily. Once the thought entered her mind she couldn’t get it out of her head. She tried not to think of Lily too much. She was muggleborn. And a girl. Plus she loved the potter boy now. Lucius was the better choice for a life partner. They had been best friends since childhood anyway and when Lucius asked her to marry her she had weighed the options then and there, she’d done all the math, made all the guesses and estimates and known that this was her only chance to end up with a halfway decent man.
She hadn’t wanted him to take the dark mark. But if he hadn’t, what would’ve happened then? They would both be disgraced. What had she said yes to Lucius for if not to avoid that very fate? And so she said nothing when he took the dark mark. Shed only smiled and joked that men with tattoos weren’t what she was hoping to marry but she’d accept it.
It’s what she always did. What she’d been raised to do: Smile and accept it. Be the perfect little housewife. Have two sons and a daughter that she could marry off to the next best pureblood. She knew about the little boy growing in her, she hadn’t had a period in months and the divination spells shed cast confirmed her suspicion. She had yet to tell Lucius or her mother. Or anyone for that matter.
But that wasn’t what she was thinking about as she stared at the scar on peters cheek. She thought about the redheaded force of nature that she had always loved, the girl who had a little boy of her own on his way. She thought about the third stall from the left in the prefect’s bathroom where they had kissed for the first time. She thought about them standing behind the bleachers after a Quidditch game lily wondering if she’d screamed Narcissa’s name loudly enough. And Narcissa was worried if anyone had heard. No one could know. And Lily wanted to scream it from the rooftops.
Narcissa often wondered if she could’ve lived her life like Andromeda and Sirius had: married the girl she loved even if it meant being disgraced from her family. Lived in a quaint old cottage like Andromeda of joined the order like Sirius. But then she would think about Sirius tortured screams from the library as his parents used cruciatus on him. Or the words traitor etched into Andy’s skin by their parents. And her parents. They’d already let the bloodline down by having three daughters, they couldn’t possibly have two of them be traitors. They wouldn’t survive the heartbreak. They’d go as mad as Bellatrix did after Andromeda left.
“Peter?” she asked as he sat down opposite her, before becoming acutely aware of her surroundings and switching her tone away from Nissa, the girl who loved Lily Evans, over to Narcissa Black, the daughter of the house of black “I see you’ve found your way to the right side of the war”
Voldemort gave her an approving glance “I would hardly call it a war, it will be a short fight against that puny order of the phoenix” he looked over at peter “they can’t even keep their own on their side”
“How do you know he’s not just a spy, lord?” Bellatrix raised her wand at him “Looks like a rat alright”
“Has he taken the dark mark?” Bellatrix’ husband asked eyeing peter up and down
Peter pulled up his sleeve “Not yet” He looked Rodolphus in the eyes “but I will gladly take it once this meeting is over, if that’s what it takes to prove I’m on your side”
And that’s when it hit Narcissa like a punch in the gut: peter wasn’t here as a spy or out of fear of the dark lord, he was here out of the hatred in his heart for James Potter and Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and even Lily Evans. He was here because he wanted to see them suffer like he had all those years at Hogwarts, always the butt of the joke, always the last choice, always the fourth marauder, never quite belonging.
“He’s not a spy” she said “Just a traitor”
“And how would you know that, Narcissa?” Severus Snape asked. Somehow he had been quiet this entire time, a rare occasion for an asshole like him.
“He fears the dark Lord more than he has respect for his friends” A half lie “So I guess we know just how obvious it is that the order is losing and falling apart”
“We already knew that” The dark lord chimed in
“Yes of course, but cowards like peter will always choose the winning side” she laughed at him “why do you think he was a hat stall? He’s an ambitious boy, just like us, but none of us would be pathetic enough to befriend him so he chose the next strongest friends” she spat those words, wishing she could just tell everyone what a horrible coward peter was.
“Unfortunately they were also stupid enough to believe Dumbledore” She looked him in the eye, her expression telling him all she didn’t say “that’s the only time he was smarter than the average Gryffindor”
“That’s enough Narcissa” Lucius shut her up “don’t need to go bashing our new recruit”
“No, no” peter didn’t hold her gaze the way she did “I take it as a compliment”
“I didn’t know someone could take something Narcissa said as a compliment” Bellatrix laughed and the whole table stiffly joined
Narcissa zoned out for the rest of the meeting, paying just enough attention to know when to laugh and when to throw in a little comment about how great the dark lord is while they discussed attacks and perfected spells and milked Peter for every last piece of information he had.