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Narcissa Militant	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17885 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the second-to-last part of Narcissa Tournamental; there will need to be one more. I hope you’re enjoying it.
Part Four
“Weasley finally did forgive him,” Draco said.
Narcissa raised her eyebrows slowly as she studied him. Draco had sent her a letter saying he urgently needed to speak to her by Floo, and Severus had let him use the Floo in the Potions professor’s office. But now that he had her here, all Draco seemed inclined to do was chatter about meaningless gossip that he could easily have put in a letter.
“Draco,” she said, when he opened his mouth again. “Tell me why you wanted to speak to me by Floo—the real reason—or I will leave.”
The flush that surged up her son’s pale cheeks was definitely something he had inherited from his father. Narcissa had never blushed after she understood the ways of the world.
“There’s a Yule Ball coming up,” Draco said, and his fingers fidgeted with his sleeves. “I—all the Champions have to attend it. They all have to bring a date. The other people who can attend it are fourth-years and up.”
“And?” Narcissa imagined that he wanted to go with Harry, but that was still not something he had needed to Floo his mother about.
“Harry hasn’t asked me! He was talking about how awful it was to have to dance with someone when he can’t dance that well, and he looked past me and said maybe some girl in Gryffindor would take pity on him and ask him. Or maybe he would try to get his Granger to go with him. Not me!” Draco folded his arms with a dramatic swish.
Narcissa fought to keep from smiling. She said, “Do you envision yourself in the position of a Gryffindor girl swept off her feet by the Boy-Who-Lived, Draco?”
“Wha—of course not!”
“Then ask him. He has to go. He doesn’t want to do the asking by himself. Surely you are the next logical choice, when you want to date him?” Narcissa watched with interest as the flush on her son’s face deepened from rose to apple.
“I want him to ask me!”
“That sounds like you being in the position of the Gryffindor girl you denied being, Draco.”
“It’s just—” Draco stared at her. “I want him to actually choose me, not go with someone who’s second-best because he’s too afraid to ask me! Or maybe he doesn’t really want me, but I don’t think that’s true—”
“I am sure it is not. However, in this case, the fear of asking holds him back and makes him recoil from the humiliation. After the way he has been humiliated at the hands of the entire school for supposedly making himself Champion, I can understand why he feels this way. So this once, Draco, I think you must do the asking. Harry will have other chances to sweep you off your feet and show you how much you mean to him.”
Draco was turning the color of a tomato now. “Mother.”
“You were the one who wanted to discuss this,” Narcissa said. She truly could not understand Draco’s position. If Harry had been more confident and more prone to put himself forwards, then yes, it would make sense for Draco to wait until he asked. But he wouldn’t, so Draco had to. It was what Narcissa would have done if she was that age and someone she fancied wasn’t up to asking her. He wouldn’t have what he wanted unless he strove for it. Surely she had taught her blood son that lesson as well as her adopted one?
“I don’t—I want him to choose me!”
“He will choose you in many important ways, ways that matter, in the future. Are you going to sulk about this one all your years together instead of making one choice on your own?”
Draco shut the Floo down. Narcissa rolled her eyes. She would make sure to tell Draco that she didn’t want to hear anything about the Yule Ball in the future. In his hands lay the power to change it, and he had thrown it away.
Narcissa had little respect for such people.
*
“Harry went with Patil.”
“Which one?” Narcissa asked idly as she studied the cauldron in front of her. It was swirling with blue and silver, so bright that it looked as if the liquid were starred with molten metal. If this worked, then it would solve the problem that currently confronted her about the Second Task. If not, then she would have to find another solution.
And she would have to make sure that she had enough of the potion, too. Which meant creating enormous batches of it, and then creating some more for this cauldron, because of course she would have to test some of this on the small tank of goldfish swimming contentedly next to her.
“Mother, aren’t you listening?”
“No. I told you that I didn’t want to hear any more about the Yule Ball, Draco.” Narcissa finally decided that standing around and waiting would be useless. She dipped her ladle into the cauldron, scooped up a precise amount of both silver and blue potion, and then walked towards the aquarium.
“You don’t care about me!”
Narcissa turned around and poured the ladle into the aquarium at the same moment as she caught and held Draco’s eyes. “I love you very much,” she said to him, and he opened his mouth a little and listened. “But that does not mean I can do all things for you, Draco. I advised you on what to do about the Yule Ball. You didn’t want to listen.”
“I just want him to choose me.”
“Over what?” Narcissa supposed she should have asked that question before. Harry had chosen to stay with Draco and be friends with him over the protests of his Gryffindor friends, and while he had wavered during second year, he had never done so since. He had told Draco the truth about not putting his name in the Goblet. He had done what he could to protect him, and he was training with some of Narcissa’s same goals in mind.
Draco opened his mouth, then paused. Narcissa nodded and began to write down notes as she watched the potion affect the water in the aquarium, but not harm the goldfish.
“You have to think about that, Draco. There are things he can do to show that you are special, but he has done some of them, and they are not enough. What is it you want?”
Draco said nothing, but the Floo shut down again. Narcissa smiled in satisfaction and turned back to watch the goldfish darting around and pushing their noses curiously against the bounds of the much smaller area.
The potion should work. Now, for the tedious task of brewing some more.
*
“Mother.”
Narcissa turned her head and smiled. Even the cold whip of the February wind past her cheeks couldn’t dim her cheerfulness. “Yes, darling?”
Draco stared at her morosely. Around them, the people who had chosen to run the Triwizard Tournament were once more arguing: Crouch with Bagman, Karkaroff with McGonagall, Madame Maxime with Hagrid, for some reason. Narcissa shook her head. What a disappointment McGonagall had turned out to be. Narcissa saw no reason to kill her yet, but she seemed to think that blithely putting Harry in danger was an acceptable outcome, rather like Dumbledore.
“You did this.” Draco’s voice was small and muffled as he stared at the shadow hovering overhead.
“Yes, darling.”
“If you had just let it go,” Draco hissed so hard that Narcissa turned to look at him with mild surprise, “then this could have been a chance for Harry to show that he chooses me.”
“He can show that any time he wants,” Narcissa countered, and reached out to smooth her hand through Draco’s hair. Draco only moved angrily away, beginning to stomp around the shore of the lake.
Or what had been the lake.
Narcissa felt her own smile crook her mouth, and she looked up.
Overhead hovered the gigantic ball of the congealed lake, filled with darting fish and grindylows and waving weeds and piled rocks and the merfolk, who watched the wizards with the kind of fascination that Narcissa usually used to look at her own aquarium. She had harmed none of the creatures in the lake. She had simply dumped in gallon after gallon of her potion, which was water-based and full of harmless ingredients otherwise, and which made the water droplets want to stick to each other and fly.
“What are we going to do?”
Narcissa deigned to pay attention to what other mortals were saying again. Ludo Bagman had given up shouting at Crouch and was staring hopelessly at the water, shaking his head a little. Crouch stood next to him with his hands folded behind his back, his face blank stone.
“We said that we would skip the First Task and make the Second and the Third worth twice as much,” Bagman was rambling. “But now that the Second Task is impossible, too…” He turned around and stared hard at McGonagall. “You should know everyone who’s on your grounds, madam!”
“Right now? With all the other students coming and going from the school, and family members of the Champions wanting to be admitted, and Dragon-Keepers here, and Aurors?” McGonagall scowled at Bagman, her pointed hat slipping down towards one ear. “I am lucky to recognize my own students at this point.”
“Well, someone is obviously disrupting the Tournament!”
Narcissa tuned out the argument again and turned to catch Harry’s eye. Harry gave her a small grin and then glanced off to the side. Narcissa followed the track of his gaze, expecting to see either Weasley or Granger there.
No. Instead he was looking at Draco, with enough love and longing to satisfy even a proud mother who thought her baby boy deserved the best.
Narcissa smiled. She could tell Draco this, but she doubted he would believe her. It would have to wait on some open gesture that Harry made, some method of choosing him that even Draco couldn’t mistake.
Narcissa strolled away, whistling softly under her breath, and contemplating how she was going to disrupt the hedge-maze that her contact at Beauxbatons had told her was the Third Task.
*
Narcissa paused. She had come to the Quidditch pitch, where the hedge-maze had started to grow, and was placing withering spells that would keep the plants from taking root. There were other magics woven through them that would put any dangerous magical creature or human that entered them to sleep.
But now she had heard something. And although she wore a complicated charm that allowed her to blend into the shadows, it was not impossible for someone to see her. The last thing she wanted was to be found out and have Harry endure even more isolation because his foster mother had disrupted the Tournament.
She slipped quietly towards the sound, on the other side of the Quidditch shed. It repeated itself, small and wet. Narcissa raised her eyebrows. Perhaps she would simply find a snogging couple too wrapped up in each other to notice her.
She did. And they were Draco and Harry.
Narcissa smiled to herself and slipped back to withering the hedge-maze. It seemed that Harry had finally either made his “choice” or they had shouted at each other until the truth had come out. She could imagine either scenario, but she would never ask them.
It was enough to know that things were working out.
*
“This is ridiculous!”
Narcissa raised her eyebrows politely from where she was sitting in the stands a short way behind and above Minister Fudge. “Please, sir, what do you mean?”
Fudge turned to her, scowling so hard that he didn’t even remember the instinctive deference he showed Lucius most of the time. “The maze for the Third Task is not—responding as expected,” he said through gritted teeth. “We have no place to shelter the obstacles and magical creatures and deadly spells we were planning on using!”
Narcissa smoothed down her robes over her legs and lowered her eyes. “Well,” she murmured, “I hope that you will excuse me for celebrating. I was not looking forward to seeing my foster son shoved into the middle of a dangerous situation he did not choose for himself.”
Fudge instantly turned a little pale and coughed. “Ah, yes, of course, Mrs. Malfoy,” he stumbled out. “I—of course you would be concerned for his safety. But it was just going to be a little challenge to the Champions, you know. A challenge to see who was worthy of everlasting fame and glory!”
“My foster son already has all the fame he would need,” Narcissa said softly, lifting her gaze and her eyebrows in the same moment. “Ever. And he is rich enough not to bother with a thousand Galleons. You had no reaction to the announcement that he did not choose this situation, Minister.”
“I—er, of course, conflicting reports—well, Mrs. Malfoy, I mean,” Fudge chose to bluster, “say someone else could have dropped his name in the Goblet of Fire. Who would it be? Not even young Mr. Potter has managed to track someone down or say who he suspects!”
Narcissa nodded calmly. She suspected it had been a Death Eater who had assumed a Polyjuice disguise to sneak into the school and then departed as soon as that was done. “Believe me, Minister, we are working with Harry on proving it. But I can only be glad that someone is protecting my ward from danger. If he has a mysterious enemy, can he not have a mysterious protector?”
“A mysterious enemy!” Fudge, as usual, latched on to the least important part of the statement and beamed at her while sweat continued to streak down his face. “Yes, yes, that makes much more sense than—than You-Know-Who!”
“We don’t know who, Minister. That is precisely the problem.”
Fudge gave up on the conversation as a bad job and muttered some platitudes as he turned away to address Bagman. Narcissa smiled at the wilted remains of the hedge-maze, and then Draco nudged her abruptly in the ribs and pointed.
“What’s Professor Sinistra doing, Mother? She looks awful.”
Narcissa stared at Aurora with a frown. Draco was right. She was sweating and pale as she walked forwards, her arms clasped around a large golden cup. The cup glowed at the top as though it was overflowing with flames, and for a moment Narcissa thought McGonagall had asked her to bring out the Goblet of Fire for some reason. Perhaps they intended to choose a new Task that they could ask the Champions to risk their lives at.
But instead, Aurora thrust the cup towards Harry with a jerky movement. “This is for you,” she said, barely moving lips that looked numb. “The one who would have been the true winner of the Tournament, if we could hold it.”
Harry backed up a step, eyes narrowed, his hand darting down for a knife the way Narcissa had so carefully taught him. But he hesitated, because they were in public, and Narcissa had also taught him not to reveal what he was except under circumstances when he might otherwise die.
Narcissa couldn’t make it to the bottom of the stands before Aurora moved the cup again, and Harry’s hand brushed it. There was a shimmer and both of them disappeared, pulled away into the whirling colors of a Portkey.
Narcissa checked herself. She couldn’t betray her hand here, especially since the one woman she would have wanted to target for hurting Harry was gone entirely. She bit her lip and held still.
Then she said softly, as McGonagall came hurrying up with her hat still askew, “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” McGonagall was almost panting, and she looked honestly distressed, although that wasn’t enough for Narcissa. She wanted answers and blood. “I have no idea—why would the Astronomy Professor have a grudge against Harry Potter?”
She doesn’t, Narcissa thought, her mind working quickly through possibilities. Aurora isn’t a Death Eater, or I would have sensed the presence of that particular Dark magic when I was around her last year. No, this is something else. But she goes into debt. I know that. She mentioned owing more people than me when I was her assistant last year. And she could easily have put Harry’s name into the Goblet, as well.
That she was in debt to the Dark Lord, or more likely a servant of his, was such a strong possibility that Narcissa had settled the matter to her satisfaction in her mind before McGonagall opened her mouth again.
But that did not tell what she wanted to know most, which was where Harry was.
“Did Sinistra say anything?” Narcissa asked, and glanced at the other Hogwarts professors who were closest. Severus, Pomona, and a woman with a pale face and her hands pressed to her mouth who must be the Muggle Studies professor. “About where she was going, or why she brought that cup out to my foster son like that?”
“That was the Triwizard cup,” McGonagall said in a dazed voice. “She must have enchanted it into a Portkey, but….I had no idea that she even had permission from the Ministry for such a thing!”
“She didn’t.” Fudge bustled up, sweating and important. “I’m sure she didn’t!”
Narcissa would have answered, but she saw a spasm of pain cross Severus’s face then, and his hand move to his left arm. She stepped towards him. She didn’t care, at the moment, if he saw something dangerously familiar in her voice or face. She would Obliviate him later if she needed to. “Where is he calling from, Severus?”
The man stared at her. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t intend to answer the call.”
“You will. Or answer to me, and Lucius, and all the power of the Malfoy wealth behind us.”
She didn’t know what threat persuaded him most, or if he was beginning to think about the possibilities of Harry being in the Dark Lord’s presence that she was. He inclined his head and reached out to grasp her arm. Then they began to move towards the Hogwarts gates, which weren’t far away, anyway, considering how everyone had gathered outside for the Task.
McGonagall said something behind them. So did Draco. Narcissa looked back and smiled at her son, once. She didn’t want him to come along. He didn’t even have Harry’s training to keep him safe, and both she and Severus would be fighting.
The moment that they emerged into the slanting sunlight beyond the gates, Severus Apparated, and took her with him. Narcissa laid one hand on her wand and kept the other firmly fixed on Severus’s sleeve.
She was going to destroy the Dark Lord tonight. Even if only a piece of him.
*
SickPuppy: They tried to go onto the second. Hee.
LadyRaven: Thank you! I hope you'll enjoy this next chapter.
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Narcissa Militant