Title: SACRIFICE
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No profit was made with this. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: There are different kinds of loyalty.
Author's Note: Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price. Unbeta'd. Just a little something that stuck to my mind and demanded to be written when I should be working or writing Another Country fic.




Narcissa is paler than usual when Snape finds her. The Dark Lord has only just dismissed him, satisfied with the story Snape gave him. For now.

Snape remembers the last time he's seen her, and the fatal vow she coerced him to take rests heavily on his conscience. She was desperate then, and afraid. Now, the fear is still written on her features as clearly as dark ink on ivory parchment, but there's a new edge of determination beneath it.

"Severus."

"Narcissa." He inclines his head in a brief greeting. His voice lacks the usual smoothness. He cannot muster the strength to make it obey him any longer, not tonight. "The Dark Lord wishes to see Draco tomorrow morning."

He doesn't know how to tell her that he fears for Draco's life. Dumbledore's death has appeased Voldemort for now; but if he found out that Draco had the chance to kill the headmaster and didn't, he wouldn't take kindly to the information. And there's no way Draco will be able to keep this secret from Voldemort.

Narcissa merely nods, though, and Snape wonders how much of what happened Draco has failed to reveal to his mother. The boy needs more protection now than ever; and she doesn't seem to be aware of how much –

The thought is abandoned, rudely interrupted as Snape notices the disarray the room is in. He takes in the scattered clothes, the pieces of parchment on the floor; and he wonders for a moment if there has been an attack. Turning back to face her, he's just about to ask Narcissa if she's all right, to query what's going on, when there's a flash of something on her face. He reaches out into her mind, gently probing, and almost immediately recoils violently.

"You can't –" he gasps.

There's a hint of madness in her eyes, but her voice is firm and steady. "I must. You will not stop me."

It could be a threat, or a statement of fact. He hopes it's the former, because everything else would mean that she knows more than she ought to; and he doesn't delude himself that she'd be powerful enough to keep this knowledge from Voldemort.

How she kept her plan from the Dark Lord is a mystery to him. He suspects she only managed because he is currently otherwise occupied and hasn't cared to read her thoughts.

It's insane, to think she could just leave.

"The Dark Lord will kill you both when he finds you."

"He will not find us," she replies, with a conviction that's so foolish that it is ridiculous. Snape doesn't understand how Narcissa of all people can underestimate Voldemort. She is not the first of his followers to try and get away. She would be the first to succeed, though. The bodies of her predecessors were barely recognizable when Voldemort was though with them.

There has to be another way, because this one is not going to save her or Draco – it's going to kill them.

"He will trace your magic, or Draco's."

There is a moment of silence. Narcissa holds Snape's gaze. "He will not find us," she repeats, more firmly even than before, and he understands.

There won't be anything left to trace.

It's a wild plan, and perhaps one that could work. If it doesn't, though, it will leave her unprotected and unable to defend herself. He tells her so, but the warning provokes only laughter, a hysterical sound that echoes from the walls. "No amount of magic in the world could protect me from him, Severus." Narcissa smiles bitterly.

He cannot rest his case just yet. "If Lucius hears, he –"

Desperation turns into anger within the blink of an eye. "There would be no need to take flight if it weren't for Lucius," she hisses. Snape remembers the tears in her eyes when, back at Spinner's End, she told him, 'This is vengeance for Lucius's mistake.' There's none of that now. She seems to have made up her mind in the last months that it was Lucius who forced her and Draco into this position; and he thinks he's safe in the assumption that she's grown to hate her husband for it.

"I will not stand by and watch my son being killed, Severus."

Snape regards her with a new kind of respect. He has never disliked Narcissa, unlike her sister, but he always thought of her as the weak one, guided by her admiration for her husband and her master and unable to make a decision for herself. But now, he cannot see that person any longer when he looks at the woman who stands in front of him, ready to defy the most powerful wizard in the world to protect her son.

Slowly, he nods. "So be it, then."

She smiles weakly, as if there is nothing left to say.

He'd like to imagine that they will meet again, one day, when all this is over; but he's never been that much of an optimist. If, by luck or cleverness, she manages to evade Voldemort, she will have no means to contact anyone in the wizarding world anymore and no one will be able to track her. The odds for his survival are equally low; and he doesn't put all that much faith in Potter's ability to defeat Voldemort to begin with.

"Wasn't it the Dark Lord himself who always said that we will have to make sacrifices when the final battle was near?" Narcissa interrupts his train of thought, and for a moment, Snape is terrified that she's read this thoughts. But when he checks his mental shields, they are solid and unscathed; and he figures it was just a non-sequitur on her part.

"I must go fetch Draco. Farewell, Severus."

He replies with a wordless nod; and then she's gone.

Fin.