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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 for all the reviews! This is the second and last part of the Chamber of Secrets AU.
Narcissa Secretive
I don’t think it’s very nice of you to leave me without talking to me for so long, Melliflua.
“I’m so sorry, Tom!” Narcissa had the Muggle dictate, while she settled back in her chair in the library and considered the best way to observe Lockhart. “I just had to listen to a big lecture today about how I’m not fulfilling my responsibilities, and so all my professors had me doing extra dueling lessons and copying lines. It was awful.”
What duties do they think you’re neglecting?
“Well, see, there are some people who think I’m going to save the world, and then there are the people who think I’ll save the world and go on to be Minister for Magic afterwards. They just want me to do everything.” Not that she could tell when she had the Muggle under the Imperius Curse, but Narcissa thought he might enjoy underlining the individual words. “So now I have to add politics, and foreign languages, and all this history of the Wizengamot to my studies. It’s awful.”
The diary wrote back at once, a soft sliding of words that Narcissa could almost imagine accompanying Parseltongue. Do you think it would be less awful if I helped you?
“Oh, but how could you help me, Tom? I like you a lot, but you’re just a book.”
Narcissa smiled as the book’s Dark aura, which she had cast a spell to see, changed and shifted like a flag blown by the wind. Yes, that would incense the Dark Lord. I know a lot of ways to study, Melliflua. And I could show you ways to gain influence of your own, so that you could push back against the people who want you to do everything.
“Really? That would be great!”
Yes. I can even show you where the legendary Chamber of Secrets is, so that you could gain prestige as the first one to discover it in fifty years.
Narcissa did have to tilt her head back and sigh a little. This was the young version of the man her husband had followed for so long? She sincerely hoped that no child of hers would fall for a manipulation that transparent.
“Oh, but I don’t know, Tom. I mean, there’s lots of people who would think I was evil if I found the Chamber! They would say I have to be evil. And a hateful Slytherin.”
Let them think what they will. The people who matter will know your value.
“Melliflua” went on holding back, and only let Tom “persuade” her right before she said that she had to go to class. But Riddle seemed content as Narcissa had the Muggle shut the book and march back to his rightful place in the cellars. The Malfoy Manor cellars were quite well-fitted to serve as dungeons, since they’d only been converted from that purpose into wine storage when Abraxas was alive.
Narcissa had devised a plan to her satisfaction. It would not only let her observe Lockhart and plan on how to make up for him humiliating her boys, but let her begin the intimidation tactics that would make Harry’s Gryffindor friends shut up.
*
Narcissa adjusted the form-fitting black robes and sighed a little. They would have to do. In truth, she hated pandering to expectations as much as this. She should be wearing unobtrusive grey robes slit a little up the side to allow her to move and kick and blend with shadows better.
But black was what the stereotypical assassin witch wore, so she would have to as well.
She slid rapidly down the rope that she had looped around one of the parapets of Gryffindor Tower. In seconds, she was hovering outside the windows that led into the second-year boys’ bedroom. She spent a moment making sure that her hair was still bound back in the knot that was utterly unlike any style she wore, but which also fit the stereotype she was trying to project. Her hair had been Charmed white and centered with a pair of knives.
When she was sure she was ready, Narcissa drew back one foot—clad in a thigh-high black boot—and kicked the window in.
There were yelps and screams of shock as she swirled through the glass and landed in a crouch between two beds. Weasley threw back the curtains on one, and a trembling boy Narcissa thought was Longbottom the other.
They stared at her with their mouths open. Meanwhile, Harry and two other boys, one sandy-haired, one dark-skinned, had tumbled out of their own beds. They stared at her, too.
“I have come to warn you,” said Narcissa, her voice low and biting. She held up the “ebony” wand she was using—like her hair, it was hers under a charm—and stalked slowly forwards, then whirled and almost stabbed her wand into Weasley’s throat. He squeaked. “Do you know who I was? Do you?” she hissed, long before Weasley could have got his breath back to answer.
Weasley stared at her and produced a very small sound that might have been “no.”
“I was a Slytherin who dared to have friends in other Houses,” Narcissa said to him. From the corner of her eye, she watched the other boys, but none of them was moving to stop her. She noted with satisfaction that the others were also too petrified to notice the gape of recognition on Harry’s face. “I had Gryffindors as friends. Ravenclaws. Hufflepuffs. But the Gryffindors were the ones who dared to insist that I prove I was their ‘real’ friend. And that meant performing pranks on my housemates, insulting the Hufflepuffs, and tricking the Ravenclaws into failing their exams.” Narcissa lowered her voice. “And do you know what happened next?”
Weasley squeaked.
“I was cursed!” Narcissa whirled away from him and drew the knives from her hair. Thank Merlin; they’d been nearly scratching at her scalp, even with the spell she’d performed to increase her hair thickness so that wouldn’t happen. She flourished the blades at the other boys, who tripped. Longbottom looked as if he was going to soil himself. “By the Ravenclaws that I’d shamed and the Slytherins I’d spurned. They put a curse on me to always sneak around in the dark and stab people in the back.” She demonstrated with the knives on the edge of Weasley’s mattress.
Longbottom’s lip would probably never be the same again, the way he was chewing on it. Narcissa pulled back the knives and stared at them.
“But the worst part of the curse,” Narcissa whispered, never looking up from her knives and starting to sway back and forth a little as though a breeze was pushing her, “is not being able to have friends anymore. I can never do that. I’m so alone.” She lifted her head and stared at all of them, her eyes desolate. “So I came to warn you. Don’t demand that any friends you have who associate with other Houses prove themselves to you. Because some of those Slytherins and Ravenclaws who cursed me have children here now. They might use the same curse on you.”
She bent down and whispered, although making it sure that it was loud enough that all of them could hear, “My soul is like the winter wind. I’m always cold inside. Never warm. I can’t take any joy in anything except knifework. And that’s a fleeting joy, little ones. So fleeting.” She nodded at all of them, then stifled a sob in her throat, and jumped out the window.
By the time the first of them dared to peer over the jagged edges of broken glass, Narcissa had already pulled herself up to the stones above the window’s arch. And only Harry looked up.
His stare was full of blinding, worshipful awe.
Narcissa winked at him, and then swung silently away over the top of the castle to find a good vantage point on Lockhart’s rooms.
*
“Now, children, let me tell you about the time that I discovered the recipe for a potion that sleeks down your hair and brightens your teeth all at once…”
Narcissa hung in a net of spidersilk and a Disillusionment Charm from the ceiling of Lockhart’s classroom, and shook her head a little. She thought she had heard enough. She had recognized more than one of Lockhart’s “achievements” as ones actually created or performed by other wizards, some of them her colleagues. In fact, one of her own kills had been in there, but since it hadn’t been one that she could come forwards to claim credit for, Lockhart had simply picked it up and woven it into the demonstrably false fabric of his own books.
And he seemed to thrive on the attention.
Well, he will have a new kind of attention to thrive on, Narcissa thought, and then swung in the net of spidersilk back to the top of the ceiling and carefully crawled hand-over-hand to the opening of the secret tunnel that she had discovered during her second year at Hogwarts. She could only access it hanging upside-down like this, and so she was sure, as she slid into it, that it would be empty.
It was, but she noticed something she never had before. There was a scrap of what looked like dry skin along the side of the tunnel. Narcissa picked it up and looked it over, eyes narrowing when she made out a faint pattern of scales on it.
So. There was a snake that crawled through tunnels and pipes like this once.
Possibly the monster from the Chamber of Secrets, which must be a snake to be controlled by a Parselmouth. Narcissa thoughtfully tucked the scale away. Her mind was bubbling with plans to get revenge on Lockhart and neutralize the diary. She would let them bubble for a while. Lockhart was not going to get more humiliating in the next day or so, and this plan would need time to form.
*
“Mother.”
Narcissa sprinted away from the dinner table the minute she heard Draco’s distressed wail. Kneeling down in front of the fireplace, she saw how mussed his hair was and drew in her breath. “Darling, what happened?”
For a moment, she wondered if something might have gone wrong with her Gryffindor intimidation plot, and Harry’s friends had persuaded him to ignore Draco again. But Draco said, “I don’t remember my detention with Lockhart! He said that I was going to help him answer his post from his fans, I remember that much, but—I should remember funny lines or the ink he had me use or something! But I don’t!”
Narcissa leaned slowly back. So. Memory Charms were how he was able to claim credit from those who would have wanted it. “Draco. Listen to me carefully. Do what you can not to get detention. I need three days.”
“Three days for what?” Draco mopped at his face with his sleeve, increasing her alarm. He never forgot himself, or forgot the charm that would conjure a handkerchief.
“For me to set up the plan that will ensure we get revenge on him.”
Draco went silent and stared at her. Then he said, “You’re right. You always do take care of it.”
Narcissa smiled at him. “I always do. Now, stay away from Lockhart. Take a potion that will make you sick to your stomach if you have to, to be able to stay in the hospital wing and avoid his classes. But do not let on to him that you know. All right?”
“All right, Mum.” Draco started to wipe his face with his sleeve again, but then blushed and dropped his head. “Right. I’ll get a handkerchief as soon as possible.”
“Good. I love you.” Narcissa hesitated, then added, “Tell Harry to stay away from the man and his classes as well.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Good boy.” Narcissa backed away from the fire as it flared shut and walked back towards the dining table. She shouldn’t have waited. The man could cause harm in two days. Of course, Draco couldn’t have had anything too important taken from him—most likely he had discovered some embarrassing secret—but that didn’t matter. She was going to make him pay as much as possible.
“Is Draco all right?”
Sometimes Lucius could be a concerned parent, although he would never be as much so as she was. Narcissa nodded to him and sat down in front of her plate. “Yes. He’s had a bit of a shock. Use of a Memory Charm.”
“I should get—”
Narcissa turned her head and met his eyes. Lucius shrank back into the chair. “What would you do, Lucius?” Narcissa asked softly. “Start an investigation by the Board of Governors? That would take far too long, and you know it.”
Lucius looked down. “Too long for you.”
It wasn’t often that he showed even that much defiance. Narcissa leaned back and considered him for a while, and then said, “I feel in the need of some entertainment in bed tonight. You will provide it.”
Lucius looked as if he didn’t know whether to be glad or not, especially when Narcissa went to get the manacles.
*
“And the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor? Really, Tom?”
Yes. I doubt it was originally there, of course. Salazar Slytherin probably had it concealed somewhere that was remodeled.
“Yes, you’re right. Oh, you’re so clever, Tom! I can’t wait to go there and open it and see the Chamber!”
Narcissa silently directed the Muggle to step back from the diary. Then she glanced at the potion she was brewing, and nodded. The green, acidic color it had turned showed it had reached the proper stage.
She knew that no regular method could likely destroy the diary, so she hadn’t tried. It would only infuriate Riddle and ruin the guise of her “Melliflua Malfoy” persona. But she was willing to bet that the contents could be transformed. This powerful potion would work a Transfiguration on any physical object for at least an hour. And she could easily Apparate to Hogwarts and make it to Gilderoy Lockhart’s private quarters in an hour.
Melliflua?
Narcissa had the Muggle pick up Riddle’s diary and drop it daintily into the potion.
The diary at once began to thrash, and a loud hissing, rather like a snake’s, emanated from the cauldron. Narcissa arched an eyebrow. Well, now she was glad that she had taken as many precautions as she had.
But it was for naught. The potion bubbled some more, steamed some more, and then yielded up its contents. The diary had been forcibly transformed into a bowl of raspberry ice cream.
Narcissa delicately tipped the contents of the second brewing cauldron into the ice cream—the potion that would act like a liquid version of the Imperius Curse—and slipped out and to the Apparition point.
*
Under the glamor of an innocent young witch, Narcissa knocked on Lockhart’s door. He opened it and beamed at her. Narcissa lowered her eyes shyly and held out the bowl of ice cream.
“I can’t stay long, sir,” she whispered. “My name is Nari Fortescue, and—I just wanted to give you this ice cream. I made it myself. It’s the first ice cream that my grandfather’s let me make. I—I’m such a huge fan of your work.”
“My dear, my dear, no need to stand talking in the corridor! Come in, come in.”
“No, please, I can’t.” Narcissa worked her way backwards, trembling. “Oh, Grandfather would be so angry if he knew! Just—please eat it, sir, and think of me.” She bolted around the corner, and cast the charm that would float a mirror up to her eye and allow her to look back around the corner and see what happened next.
Lockhart stood blinking at the ice cream in his hands for a few seconds, then smiled indulgently. Narcissa thought she heard him mutter something about “young love” before he dipped the spoon Narcissa had provided into the dish and lifted it to his mouth.
Yes, eat it all.
But Lockhart needed no urging. Once he had eaten the first mouthful, the liquid Imperius potion had a chance to work, and he began to swallow more and more, compelled to finish it until it was gone. Then he turned the bowl upside-down and licked it.
Narcissa cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and gave the mental command; the potion he’d drunk was linked to her as the brewer. Walk directly to the Great Hall. She had timed her visit well, and dinner was still going on, although Lockhart had left early.
Lockhart turned and hurried. His face was oddly smooth and peaceful, although now and then Narcissa saw a dark flicker behind his eyes. The diary was probably attempting to transform back into itself and fight its way out, or at least assert control of Lockhart.
Unfortunately for the diary, it was still raspberry ice cream, and would be for at least forty more minutes.
Narcissa had Lockhart fling open the doors of the Great Hall dramatically, because he would, and the less out-of-character he seemed before his untimely death, the less likely someone else would determine what was going on. “I have an announcement to make!” he caroled out to the students and professors still at the tables.
Narcissa saw Draco staring directly at the professor, his hands cupped protectively over a letter he’d been writing on the table. From his seat on the Gryffindor benches, Harry was also gaping, but he immediately looked over Lockhart’s shoulder, as if searching for her.
Narcissa arched an eyebrow. Isn’t that interesting.
“I made up most of what I put in my books!” Lockhart announced, and shed his robes. At the same time, he held up the long shirt he wore underneath, so everyone could see that his pants were embroidered with his own grinning face, including a particularly large grin right in the middle of his groin. “I didn’t really do all those things! The parts I didn’t make up, I stole from other people. With Memory Charms. I made them forget what they really did, and I took the credit.” He nodded seriously. “I feel just terrible about it, and I wanted to confess before I lost my courage.”
He didn’t seem to notice the weeping of a small group of Gryffindor girls. He dropped his shirt back down over his pants and stood up. “Now I’m going to make up for it! I know where the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets is, and I’m going to face and battle the monster inside. Don’t try to dissuade me! I know how terrible my crimes are, and this is the only way I can satisfy my guilty conscience.” He sobbed and pressed his hand over his heart. “If I don’t make it, then remember me for my smile. At least that was my own.”
He turned, the last of Narcissa’s mentally-dictated words fading from his mouth and mind, and strode towards the second-floor girls’ bathroom. For a moment, everyone in the Great Hall seemed frozen. Then a babble of voices and laughter started. Well, and sobs from the girls.
“Children!” Headmistress McGonagall stood up, Severus beside her, and cast charms that stretched glittering barriers across the doors of the Great Hall. “No, you will not be following Professor Lockhart. If he is actually going to open the Chamber of Secrets, it will be extremely dangerous.” McGonagall’s face was pale. Narcissa smiled. She’d known she could count on the woman to react that way. “You will stay here, and a few of the professors and myself will accompany—Professor Lockhart—” Her voice faltered on the title.
Oh, no, that won’t do at all. Narcissa turned and sprinted after Lockhart.
She found him kneeling on the floor in the girls’ bathroom. A ghost was peering fretfully out of the toilet while he struggled with himself, sometimes hissing.
Narcissa strengthened the pull of her will and her command. All she had to do was think of Draco and Harry, and she was more than strong enough to overcome Lockhart’s mental flailing. Open the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Draw your wand and blast the sink with the snake open if you have to.
As she had predicted, because he had the diary’s memories inside him, Lockhart knew which tap would open the Chamber even if the diary wouldn’t lend him the Parseltongue to open it. He surged to his feet and whipped out his wand. A few well-placed Blasting Curses, and there was a dark, gaping passage where a sink had been. Lockhart ran forwards and jumped into it.
Narcissa rappelled down, with rather more grace. She nodded to the bones and scraps of skin that she had to pick her way past as she walked to the Chamber. This wasn’t the nastiest graveyard she had ever walked. In fact, it looked as if the basilisk probably did professional work.
Lockhart was raging outside the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, sometimes beating the door with his fists and sometimes beating his own head. Narcissa eyed him and shook her head. He was considerably less impressive than the emerald-eyed snakes on the door of the Chamber, Narcissa thought.
Now came the trickiest part, because she had to exert her will over the diary as well as Lockhart. Hiss the words to open the Chamber. Go in and shut the door behind you. Hiss the words to open the Chamber. Go in and shut the door behind you…
It probably helped that, at the moment, Tom Riddle was partially dissolved in stomach juices. Lockhart flung his head back and uttered a long hiss. The doors to the Chamber shuddered and slid aside, the green jewels in the eyes of the serpents flaring. Lockhart stumbled inside and turned and said something else. The doors slammed shut.
Narcissa lingered a few moments only. She would have to leave when the professors showed up, she knew, but she rather hoped—
There was a choked-off scream a moment later, and a loud, indignant hissing, too loud to come from a human throat.
Narcissa smiled and turned away, content. Her boys were avenged, Lockhart’s humiliation would be remembered and his posthumous reputation ruined, and the diary was either trapped in the Chamber forever or, quite possibly, a pile of poisoned half-digested ice cream in Lockhart’s stomach, soon to be a poisoned pile of giant serpent waste. Basilisk venom might have almost any effect on it.
She did remind herself to tell Harry not to come down here. He was a Parselmouth, and might think it a grand adventure. Narcissa would have to explain that it was only a grand adventure until he thought about having to stay in his room all summer.
*
“I want to know how you do it.”
Narcissa set aside the Prophet she’d been lingering over for the headline—yet another revelation of a Lockhart book written under false pretenses—and gave Harry her full attention. They were the only two in the dining room, since Draco hadn’t yet come down and Lucius was spending some quality time with the manacles. “What do you mean, Harry?”
“You keep making things happen.” Harry stared at her over his last spoonful of porridge. Narcissa arched her eyebrow, and he ate it, then continued, “I want to know how.”
Narcissa considered him thoughtfully. She had dreamed before of finding a protégé to follow in her footsteps, but had assumed it would come about when Draco was grown. If he wanted to learn the discipline, he could, but so far Draco hadn’t shown any interest.
Now here was Harry, who hadn’t known there was discipline to learn.
“Very well,” Narcissa said. “I can give you some preliminary lessons. But that’s not the same as being able to do what I do. I’ve had years of training.”
“That’s okay. I just want to make a difference. I want to—to make sure that no one else can ever control me again. The Prophet was writing some stories about me and Lockhart and how much I must have wanted attention when he was making me pose in photos with him. And my friends were trying to make me choose between them and Draco. I don’t want that to ever happen again.”
Harry’s eyes were so bright with determination. Narcissa felt her eyebrows creeping up her forehead even as she smiled. “I look forward to teaching you, Harry.”
The End.
*
Roguish_Diva; Thank you! I think it'll be fine when they're older, too.
SickPuppy: Thank you! So far it's been easy to stay close to canon events while twisting them around.
Asuka_Bloodberry: Hope Lockhart's fate was appropriately nasty.
SP777: Don't you mean "more wicked?" ;)
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Narcissa Militant