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siriusly-sapphic · 1 year

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META: Trans Narcissa Malfoy

This is 7K words long and divided into 8 bullet points. It can also be found on AO3 through this link.

This is going to be an overview of my trans!Narcissa headcanon, with a look at queerness in the Black family/pureblood society as a whole, different family dynamics, and how growing up a trans kid in a society like this influences different headcanons/aspects of her character. Needless to say, this is based on my own headcanons and the very limited canon information we have about her (most of which does not inform us about her childhood and family relations as we’d like). It’s by no means meant as an argument as to why everyone should adopt this headcanon, it’s just informative and fun.

I have one reason for writing this and one reason only and it’s “I love this headcanon and want to be able to refer to it without spamming a whole explanation and additional headcanons into an unexpecting discord chat”. Plus, I want to write more headcanons about specifically my take on Narcissa, and for some of those headcanons it’d be very convenient to just be able to refer back to an existing post on how her being trans influences some things in the rest of her life.

How this will be structured:

First things first

1: A general look at how I think queerness is seen and treated in the Black family and by extension pureblood society.

2A: The Black family and the importance of sons and Heirs.

2B: Specifically Narcissa’s position.

3A: Getting to Narcissa’s specifics: a timeline on her realisation and coming out.

3B: Specifically, her parents’ and sisters’ reaction and her own fears.

4: Tying back to the Heirs, the reactions and attitudes of Narcissa’s cousins.

5:Narcissa’s plans for her future and openness about her being trans and queer. (Side tangent: Narcissa and the way she confirms to roles, not individuality.)

6A: Narcissa’s marriage and having a baby

6B: Raising Draco

7: How she chose her name.

8: Some fic recs to close it off

There'll be mentions of transphobia and miscarriage in this post!

Alright so let's get into it I’m so excited.

Firstly

The very simple reason why I love this headcanon. It’s entirely born from a conversation with a friend back in like 2014 on “but why doesn’t her name fit the rest of the cousins/most of her immediate family?” during which we looked at other fanon theories and then went “but what if…” and settled on this. There are obviously other theories, one of the most popular ones that I’ve seen being that Druella cheated and Narcissa is not a Black at all, hence Cygnus refused to give her a traditional name. Personally, I don’t like that as much, and I prefer to think of it as a name she chose herself.

Realistically, the author named Narcissa as a Malfoy and had not decided or simply forgotten that her maiden name would be Black. Narcissa as a character was very blatantly created as Draco’s mum and Lucius’ wife, and therefore she looks like that and not like a character born into the Black family. I don’t care. I’m giving her some fucking agency.

(Sidenote: I know that TODAY there is a star named Narcissus. It was named in 2014 which is well after Narcissa’s birth and the books’ release and it was named by a random person. This is not what Narcissa was named for.)

1: Queerness in the Black family (and pureblood society)

The way I see it, queerness in and of itself is not grounds for disownment within the family. Pureblood society functions best when everybody does what is expected of them, and is vaguely happy doing it. By no means does this mean that it’s celebrated or wholeheartedly accepted, but as long as it does not interfere with your willingness to fulfil your duties, who cares. If you’re insistent and dutiful, you can even change which role you’ll fulfil for your family, if the circumstances allow. At the same time, I imagine it’s a bit of a ��don’t ask don’t tell’ situation, where privacy is greatly appreciated depending on the circumstances. Be gay, if you want to be, but do get married and don’t make a scandal.

How this interacts with different people in these families fully depends on what is expected and needed within a specific family. For example, a family like the Lestranges with two pureblood sons, wouldn’t have much of a problem if one of them was gay, as long as at least one of them got married and continued the family name. A family with only one son would be more strict about this, and most likely absolutely would expect their son to marry a witch regardless of his sexuality.

In the Black family specifically, this is complicated because the cousins cause enough trouble without involving queerness. If all of them believed in the blood politics and no one got disowned, Sirius being queer would not have been a huge deal. What I do believe caused problems is Sirius very happily and openly snogging halfblood wizards or blood traitors. If he’d bought into his family’s ideologies and Regulus had gotten married to a pureblood witch, and Sirius would’ve fallen for some wizard of the Sacred 28, arrangements could be made to make that work.

More specifically being trans, again, so highly depends on the circumstances. One of these is, again, simply the amount of other children willing and able to do as told. I will get into the importance of Heirs in a bit, but having at least one son per family is something most families strive for. In that regard, a trans son would be more likely to be happily received than a trans daughter, but again it depends on the circumstances. If a family has three children and two of them are cis wizards, the third being a trans witch would be far less of an issue than if (as in Narcissa’s case), the first two are also witches.

Obviously this is a far more complicated topic, but that’s the gist of it: it depends, but if you’re willing to do as told or you are lucky enough to have the siblings to ‘make up’, being queer is not the end of the world and can absolutely be accepted. Also, again obviously, I’m by no means saying that that’s a good and ideal way of treating queerness (or your children in general). I hope that’s clear.

2A: Sons and Heirs in the Black family

This is specifically about the importance of the name and of the Heir in the Black family, and how I imagine this would work for the two different branches we see in canon. (Orion and Walburga’s children, and Cygnus and Druella’s.)

Long story short: they’re important. Both Druella and Walburga would have entered their marriages knowing that the main thing expected of them is to not only have at least one son, but to raise that son into a proper Heir ready to continue the name and reputation of the Black family. In my head, this largely goes per branch of the family tree. Walburg having two sons does not mean that Druella should not have one, and if both had a son it would not matter as much who’s older. They’d both be raised as the respective Heirs of their fathers, and that’d be the most important role within that family.

For Sirius and Narcissa, in this case and following my basic timeline, this means that for the first fifteen years of Narcissa’s life, they were both viewed as the respective Heirs of their family. Regulus is Sirius’ ‘spare’, in that sense, in case Sirius fucks it up along the way (which, obviously, he does and we all love him for it), but that does not translate as much to giving Narcissa any leeway. Would it have been ‘worse’ if both her cousins were witches? Sure, absolutely, but having two male cousins does not mean her father doesn’t want his own Heir, too. Narcissa was supposed to be that, and clearly wasn’t.

2B: Narcissa’s own position in the family

In a way this builds very much on the semi-popular fanon that Narcissa, cis or trans, was supposed to be her father’s son. She’s the youngest of her sisters, and she’s the last child Druella has. She was Druella’s last chance of having the Heir her husband needed and fulfilling her duty towards the family she married into. I have seen headcanons where Narcissa is born a cis girl, immediately offsetting disappointment in her family because that’s not what was supposed to happen, and she suffers this perceived failure of her mother for much of her life.

If she’s trans, that’s not immediately what happens.

In this instance, Narcissa is born and she’s assumed to be the Heir her parents were waiting for. Her father’s Heir, his only son, her mother’s duty fulfilled and their absolute pride and joy. She would have been raised with the knowledge and understanding (and, I sincerely believe until she came to the realisation she’s a girl, full willingness) that she’d marry an appropriate pureblood witch and continue the family name, have her own Heirs, and do exactly as her family needed. After two older sisters, and as they grew older two rebellious older sisters (in different ways, but still), Narcissa was the golden child. Including as they got older compared to Sirius, she was the ‘better’ Heir.

Until she wasn’t.

I think this put Narcissa into a position where the role she had been raised and praised for her entire life, at one point becomes something that she can’t possibly live up to. Narcissa has always been raised for a very specific purpose, a purpose that I genuinely believe she would have wanted to fulfil if she thought she could, and then she comes to the realisation that she can’t. She knows her family. She knows what she needs to be, and she knows she can’t. Narcissa was the light of her family, the absolute golden child. She was that annoying brat that other parents pointed their children to in a “look at her, be more like her” manner. The example of what it meant to be a pureblood wizard’s Heir.

And that brings me to perhaps my favourite thing about her in this entire post.

She knew exactly what she was doing when she came out. She knew what she was risking, she knew what she was giving up, and she did it. More about that process in the next part, but that’s important. I don’t think there were many moments in Narcissa’s life where she chose something for herself without letting her family’s needs overshadow hers. Her coming out was exactly that. That was a choice she made knowing full well that it was one of the worst things she could do to her family, and I admire her for it.

That said:

3: The timeline, her realisation and coming out process

So in the briefest overview: the way I tend to write Narcissa, she realises that she’s trans somewhere in the beginning of her fourth year at Hogwarts, at 14. She comes out to her family (and with that, really, the rest of society) in the summer between fourth and fifth year, allowing her to start her fifth year as Narcissa.

That’s the timeline, roughly. But what matters here too, is how her cousins and sisters are doing. Frankly, Narcissa would’ve had an easier time transitioning if Sirius and Andromeda had stayed in their lanes (and she absolutely does carry some resentment about that towards them, however unfair this may be). For this I’m using mainly an alternate age gap between the Black cousins, not the canon one, but I’ll also make a brief note on how canon age gaps could work into this!

The way I most often write the Black cousins’ ages is as follows: when Narcissa is 15, Andromeda is 17/18, and Bellatrix is 19. Sirius is 14/15 and is only a few months younger than Narcissa, and Regulus is 13.

The most important thing about this is, for the sake of the timeline, this means that Sirius is already sorted and is already rebelling and is well on his way to getting disowned. He’s the family disappointment, only outdone by Andromeda who’s eloped with Ted at this point. Narcissa is the golden perfect child more than ever. And she’s realising she’s not.

This also means that her sister is already disowned. There are some rumours about Sirius potentially being disowned, too. Narcissa would be incredibly naive to the workings of her family if she went into coming out without acknowledging there was a possibility that she would be disowned. As I said, I don’t think that in pureblood society, being trans would necessarily immediately translate to being disowned, but in this particular case… That’s a very real possibility.

I think she knew that. I think she was willing to take that risk, and she was willing to suffer the consequences of being disowned. She knew it was a possibility, and she accepted that.

Between her realising she’s trans and her telling her family, there’s a period of time where I do think she genuinely tried to bargain with herself about it. Trying to see if she could make it work. If she could pretend, and keep pretending, and deny this about herself. And she decided she couldn’t, and it wasn’t worth it. Her choosing that her own well-being is more important than what her family needs from her is a rare decision on her part — it’s honestly not one she makes much more often.

Obviously, she did not get disowned. But that doesn’t change that she didn’t know that, and I want to give her credit for that.

If you want to follow a more canon timeline: the main big difference here is that Sirius would be a lot younger. By the time Narcissa comes out, he would not be rebelling yet, and while this places Regulus in a less vulnerable position at the time, it doesn’t necessarily change the pressure on Narcissa’s shoulder. Her father still would not have a replacement for his Heir.

3B: The family’s reactions to her coming out

So why is she not disowned?

My headcanon is basically that Druella wanted to disown her. Walburga perhaps even wanted to disown her. Cygnus considered it, very genuinely so, and then decided not to.

Again for this we look at the context: Andromeda has been disowned for eloping with a muggleborn wizard. Bellatrix is devoted to blood purity, but instead of being this obedient daughter to her family she’s following around Tom Riddle. In my head, Bella doesn’t get married very young and she’s quite rebellious in her own way in the sense that she wants a place in Voldemort’s circles and doesn’t really look for a husband immediately.

Narcissa has two sisters, one who’s disowned and one who has no intention of being the ideal daughter her parents would’ve preferred. Now, what their parents want is for Narcissa to remain their Heir, but Cygnus isn’t stupid either.

He’s in a position where whether he disowns Narcissa or not, his Heir is gone. Either he disowns her and she leaves the family and gets to live her life in peace, or he doesn’t disown her and she might not be his Heir anymore, but she’s still his devoted daughter. And Narcissa is devoted. She loves her family, she takes pride in her family, and her parents know that. Furious as they might be that she chooses herself over her family when she decides to transition, they’re not stupid and they know that she is devoted to the family reputation and whatever else she might do to help it.

So I think Cygnus decides not to disown her, with the deal that if she won’t be his Heir, she’ll be a damn perfect daughter. And Narcissa absolutely makes it her purpose in life to be just that. Cygnus’ reaction can be summed up as being disappointed, but willing to see what Narcissa can do for his family when she’s allowed to be herself. He’s not a great father, but that’s an alright moment. He does genuinely love his daughters, even if none of them end up quite what he’d expected or wanted from them, and between the three of them Narcissa remains his favourite.

Druella… I plan to write a whole separate post on Druella and Narcissa’s relationship. But Druella wants Narcissa to be disowned, and when Narcissa isn’t disowned, Druella does not forgive her. Druella became a mother because she was a wife and she had to give her husband sons. I think the way she sees it, it’s very simple: Narcissa was supposed to be the fulfilment of Druella’s duty, and instead she became the reason Druella ‘failed’. There is nothing Narcissa can do after coming out that is going to make Druella truly proud of her, truly happy to have her as a daughter. I don’t think that stops Narcissa from trying, but her mother very much sees her as a reflection of her personal failure, and she’s not getting back from that. Druella’s heinous, really.

Moving on to Narcissa’s sisters, Bellatrix and Andromeda: this ties back again to being trans or queer in general, is not as big a deal in most of the wizarding world as circumstances can make it. Andromeda is eloped by the time Narcissa comes out, or she’s in the process of running away, and I imagine the biggest feeling she has about it is concern regarding their parents’ reaction. She loves her little sister, though, and if anything she’s disappointed that Narcissa chooses to stay within the family when given the chance instead of just leaving. Bellatrix is a little more complicated, but ultimately positive.

For Bellatrix, I think her feelings are split between this strong protectiveness over her little sister, which is also fuelled by Andromeda having just left and Bellatrix is furious with her and really determined to not lose another one of her sisters. Where Andromeda is disappointed that Narcissa stays, Bellatrix celebrates it. On the other hand, she’s kind of jealous in a way, and that pisses her off. I think between Bellatrix and Narcissa, Bellatrix has always been the oldest and Narcissa has always been the most important. Bellatrix, in a way, would love to have what Narcissa was born into. That importance to the family, that position of power that Narcissa’s grown up in, being the favourite without even really trying. Narcissa was the one her parents had waited for, Bellatrix was ‘just’ the oldest daughter who had to prove herself.

And obviously, it’s not that simple, and it was hell for Narcissa in a different way, but from Bella’s perspective… I can see her being a little pissed off that Narcissa, out of all people, is stepping back from that role that she used to take such pride in and that the family has always prided her on. Ultimately though, Bellatrix also isn’t stupid and she can damn well see that Narcissa is going through it and needs her big sister, and I do genuinely believe that Bellatrix loved her sisters very deeply. It’s the two of them against the world, in a way, and they have each other’s back.

4: Heirs and cousins

Okay so tying back to the importance of Heirs in this godforsaken family. Sirius and Regulus’ reactions to Narcissa’s coming out are painful in two opposing ways. Here it becomes important, too, that Sirius and Narcissa in my headcanons are quite close in age.

Sirius and Narcissa grow up close together as the Heirs to their fathers. That’s such a particular kind of pressure and strain onto a young child that only the two of them really understand. Even compared to other pureblood families, not all of them are quite as uptight and strict. They found a lot of understanding in each other for those first 14 years. Regulus is Sirius’ ’spare’, in a way, and is not raised with quite that same pressure (yet).

The interesting thing here is (and one day I’ll do an entire post on just Sirius and Narcissa bc I love their dynamic) that both Sirius and Narcissa, as they get a little older and enter their teens, stop wanting to be the Heirs to their family. For the different reasons, obviously, but that still happens. Both become, in a way, disillusioned with these ideas that they’ve been raised with all their lives. Both of them, for different reasons and perhaps without expressing this to each other initially, want out.

Because both of them in a relatively short timeframe make it clear that they don’t intend to be these perfect Heirs they were supposed to be for much longer, Regulus gets put in an extremely difficult position. I do think that both Sirius and Narcissa feel a degree of guilt towards him, for that reason, even if they know there wasn’t really another way to make it work. From Regulus’ perspective though… I think he loves Narcissa, and he looks up to her, but for the first while after she comes out, he feels betrayed. He feels like she’s just made his life more difficult for a selfish reason, something he was already starting to feel about Sirius, and he doesn’t respond very well. He gets over that, with time (I think Sirius being officially disowned brings Regulus and Narcissa much closer, as they’ve both experienced that kind of ‘betrayal’ from a sibling. Yeah, seeing your siblings and cousins making choices that benefit them but make your impossible duties harder to fulfill is more often seen as betrayal by these kids then not, apparently).

Sirius, ironically, feels betrayed too.

As I said earlier, I think a lot of what pureblood kids are and aren’t allowed to get away with highly depends on what their siblings and cousins are doing in the meantime. For Sirius, this kinda means that when Narcissa comesout he knows that him running away is going to make things harder for Regulus than they would already have been. That complicates his feelings, but I think Sirius’ main feeling of betrayal actually comes from Narcissa not leaving the family.

I think that when Sirius and Narcissa both came to the conclusion that they didn’t want to be the Heirs of their family anymore, Sirius got a little hopeful. I genuinely think that for a short while there, his plans involved Narcissa being disowned and him being disowned too and the two of them who are already so close being able to make a better life for themselves away from the family that he’s grown to hate. Sirius doesn’t anticipate that Narcissa doesn’t want that. For Narcissa, disownment is a risk she’s willing to accept the consequences of, but when she’s not disowned she’s grateful and she’s happy and she refuses to entertain the idea of voluntarily leaving the family behind.

For that, Sirius feels betrayed. Regulus wants Narcissa to never have come out at all (for a little while), Sirius wants her to go all the way and truly rebel. Narcissa’s stuck in the middle where she always feels safest, and everyone’s left disappointed.

I promise things get a little happier.

5: Narcisssa’s plans moving forward

Looking at the course of her life, I think it’s safe to say that for Narcissa’s genuine happiness and well-being it would’ve been best, actually, if she’d been disowned at fifteen. If she had been forced out of the family, forced to find a different way of living outside of this restrictive family that demanded too much of her, she’d have been better off. But that’s not what happened.

Narcissa isn’t disowned, and to her that’s the best news she could’ve gotten. What this means, however, is that she’s now in a position where the reason she was allowed to stay a part of the Blackfamily, is because there was a chance she could be the perfect daughter neither of her sisters were. She takes that to heart, far too willingly, and it affects almost everything she does moving forward. To Narcissa, in some tragic way of thinking, she owes her family that much. She owes them perfection, because she failed the first time around and her father ‘forgave’ her. Moving forward, a lot of her motivation becomes “making her family proud” which can in a way be translated to “don’t make them regret this decision”.

And it’s very simple, really: all she has to be is perfect. Narcissa is someone who understands what is expected of her very very well, and for the most part what is expected of her corresponds with what she wants. She knows the rules of pureblood society, and I think from her perspective the most straightforward way of keeping herself safe and protected is by simply following these rules to a tee. She doesn’t push her luck, she keeps her head relatively down and does as told when it matters.

She’s one of those women who genuinely looks forward to marrying a rich man for his last name and have two picture perfect sons for him. While I think she’s a romantic at heart, I also think she’s ultimately realistic and she’s okay with not getting a fairytale marriage if that’s what her family needs. Narcissa takes so much pride in the Black family name, and honestly I think she’s aware that it’s partly that name that means that no one else in pureblood society would dare question her regarding her coming out or her transition. Whether that’s true or not (it entirely depends on other world building, obviously), she’s absolutely grateful for the protection offered by the Black name. Even if her parents are less than pleased about it, even if her mother wants her disowned, as long as she’s not, her mere association with the Black family offers security and a place in society that she otherwise easily could have lost.

In her eyes, the path forward is clear. Be Cygnus’ perfect daughter, become some pureblood wizard’s perfect wife, and raise his perfect children. It’s easy, it’s something she wants, and it’s something she’s genuinely good at. Narcissa understands society, she plays the game very well, and she has a good time playing.

The caveat here is that I do think this comes with the consequence of Narcissa genuinely not having much of an identity beyond the way she exists to other people. This is again something I want to make a separate post on, but for now: Narcissa has been raised to fulfill a purpose, not as a child and a person in her own right. When she transitioned, she didn’t necessarily seek out individuality, either. She sought to change the purpose she fulfilled in her family, and quite frankly being her own person with individual needs and desires was not high on her list of priorities.

Narcissa was raised the Black Heir, and it takes her a really long time to stop identifying herself as much more beyond Cygnus Black’s Daughter or Mrs. Lucius Malfoy, or even simply Draco Malfoy’s mother. Following a canon timeline, I don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to not truly let herself be just Narcissa until the Second War is over. Even when she perceives herself to make a genuinely selfish decision in pushing forward with her transition despite her family’s wishes, she does it in such a way that still does not allow for genuine personal freedom on her part. That’s just not what she seeks out — and it takes her a long time to realise that that’s even something she needs. (That said, fics and headcanons that push her to realise this much sooner are my absolute favourite).

Throughout the rest of her life, she kind of exists in this space between being out and being open about being trans (and being queer in general, I also headcanon her as being bisexual). For obvious reasons, most everyone in the wizarding world who reads Witch Weekly and keeps up a little bit with pureblood society knows that Narcissa’s come out. It’s genuinely big news for the infamous Black Heir to transition. That’s a thing. Narcissa doesn’t mind that that much, it’s something she expected but it’s also the reason she is genuinely very grateful that her family has her back in the eyes of the public.

But after the initial wave of shock and curiosity, when she’s married and she’s on her way of having a baby… she doesn’t mind just never bringing it up again. Narcissa never treats being trans as a secret, and it’s absolutely not something she’s ever ashamed about, but she’s not the kind of person who gets involved in activism or longs to be a spokes person for the trans community. You’ll never see her at a pride parade. It’s honestly a shame, and I think it could do her well to find genuine pride (and not arrogance), but that’s not who she is.

I imagine for Narcissa, it almost feels like her transition is a very specific chapter in her life that happened, that’s past, that she feels no shame about whatsoever, but she sees no reason to revisit it. Most people of Harry’s generation that aren’t purebloods won’t even know, and she doesn’t care if they do (if asked, for whatever reason, she sees no point in hiding. She’s not closeted in any way. She simply passes well and has no desire to bring up the past.)

6: Narcissa’s marriage and having Draco

First things first, the first “but actually” comment I always get if I mention trans!Narcissa is “but she has a child” and quite frankly, fuck that. This is a world with magic and the magic in HP has shitty rules that allow for near anything to be possible. This is also a fandom that loves to write cis teen boys accidentally knocking each other up and if you can make that look plausible in your worldbuilding, a trans woman with the resources and privilege Narcissa has, can damn well make it happen.

That said: her family. This will be a little shorter, because there are so many different interpretations of lucissa and I love so many of them but most of them are pretty similarly influenced by Narcissa being trans, honestly, unless you choose to headcanon Lucius as transphobic which personally, I just don’t want to. (My favourite description of Lucius comes from @nymphadoratonqs's portrayal of him in the sense of him being equally misogynistic towards cis and trans women lmao, but that still doesn’t apply to all lucissa ideas).

Regardless of whether Lucius and Narcissa have this epic love story or if it’s a cold and loveless arranged marriage, Narcissa would’ve married him blindly when her family wanted her to. It’s honestly that simple. To her, Lucius doesn’t have to be Prince Charming, even though she’ll love to be convinced he is. Lucius is simply a part of the duties she has towards her family, and the marriage between them is something she wants not necessarily for love but for the status and protection it provides her with and the good it does for her family’s reputation. I tend to headcanon that Narcissa married Lucius before Bellatrix married Rodolphus, so it was pretty important for her to get married quickly and get married well.

Her marriage to Lucius is in this way simply the next step in what I described in point 5: it’s what she has to do, and it’s something she’s willing to do. She likes being a wife, she genuinely does, and sad as it is, Lucius’ behaviour or care for her does not immediately change that. Whether they are madly in love before they get married, or he doesn’t bother to ask her how her day was for the entirety of the marriage.. She wants to be his wife, and she prides herself on the name Mrs. Lucius Malfoy as much as she prided herself on the name Narcissa Black.

Regarding Draco, Narcissa wants to be a mother. I think she found it quite hard in the first years, and her difficult relationship with her own mother didn’t help in the slightest, but she wants motherhood. It’s a pretty common fanon idea that Lucius and Narcissa struggled to conceive and/or suffered from miscarriages before having Draco, and that’s always been a headcanon I’ve adopted myself too.

Miscarriages happen, that’s just a tragically common fact of nature. Fertility struggles happen. These things are more common than people often acknowledge, and I don’t think the wizarding world is very different, I’d certainly ague that pureblood society is terrible about it. A pureblood witch’s most important duty is to provide her husband with sons and continue that precious bloodline. When Narcissa struggles to get pregnant, and when she loses a pregnancy, she’s both devastated and deeply humiliated.

Obviously it’s not true, but it feels like there is this one thing that she wants and that she also must do, that is expected of her, and is almost something that she feels like should ‘prove’ that she was right to think herself capable of being this perfect wife and daughter. And she fails. There are very few things that she’s quite as private about as her struggles with pregnancy. Up until the moment she’s far enough along with Draco that it feels relatively safe, she insists to anyone who asks that she and Lucius are purposefully waiting until the war settles down to have children. She absolutely refuses to admit to anyone, with perhaps the exception of one or two genuinely close friends, that anything else is happening.

And then there’s Draco.

6B: Raising her son

Draco as we see him in canon is a spoiled brat, a bigoted child, and just a general asshole. Love him or hate him, he takes after his parents and he needs some fucking work. Narcissa loves him more than she’s ever loved anything or anyone.

There’s a lot more to be said about Narcissa and Draco’s relationship, also in relation to Narcissa’s own parents and the war and it’s all so interesting, but for this particular post I’m focusing on the way Narcissa chooses to raise her son, the Malfoy Heir, after her own experiences being her father’s Heir and the pressure and the disappointment of letting him down. Narcissa knows what’s expected of her in regards to raising Draco, and she knows what will be expected of him, but there’s a line.

As I mentioned earlier, while Narcissa never bothers going through effort of hiding being trans, it’s not something she brings up herself and she prefers to live her life without giving people any potential reasons to criticise her. The exception is Draco. She ensures that from a young age, he knows she’s queer, and most important that he knows that should he ever realise he’s queer himself, she’ll understand and she’ll love him. She never wants him to feel quite as trapped in his position in the Malfoy family as she did, and she never wants him to struggle between the decision of potentially being disowned and living a life he can be genuinely happy in. Obviously, in the grand scheme of the war, none of this really ends up mattering, but that’s a very conscious choice she makes when raising Draco.

There are a lot of mistakes she (and Lucius) make when raising their son. Draco’s spoiled rotten, he’s never been told no, and then he’s put in this extremely dangerous situation as a result of his parents’ choices and mistakes. Narcissa, devoted of a mother as she is, fucks up. But she does this right. She really does. There is nothing Draco can do that would make her even consider turning her back on him, and he knows that.

7: Choosing her name

This is both where this headcanon originated and my favourite little tidbit about Narcissa’s character. I strongly believe that her deadname did fit the Black family tradition of stars and constellations and all that fun space stuff. I’ve also said that I very much believe that Narcissa was overjoyed to be able to remain a part of her family, and that she did genuinely strive to be the perfect daughter for her parents.

So why did she choose a name that did not reflect the tradition of the family she loves so dearly?

Long story short: it’s a small reminder, every day, that she did choose herself.

I think she picked the name Narcissa before she came out to her parents, before she knew if she was going to be disowned or not but at a point where she did know that she wasn’t going to be held back by the fear of disownment. She purposefully chose something that had nothing to do with her family because she had to be able to remind herself that as much as she wanted their approval, she didn’t need it. (Of course, as she grows up she does a whole lot more with the explicit purpose of gaining their approval, but Narcissa is nothing if not a very contradictory woman).

The name Narcissa comes from Greek Mythology, and it’s my personal headcanon that especially when she’s younger, she’s quite the little nerd about Greek Mythology. She read the myths in Ancient Greek and all that, and she’s honestly so pretentious about it. (Additionally: Uncle Alphard gave her her first book on mythology as a young child and she’s held onto it ever since). Narcissus is a figure who is so beautiful that just about everyone who meets him falls in love at first sight, and he’s so arrogant that people kill themselves from how cruelly he rejects them. (Literally. There’s one guy who declares his love and says he’ll die without Narcissus’ affection, and Narcissus sends him a dagger in response.) Eventually, cursed by Aphrodite for the way he treated a nymph called Echo, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in the water. He withered away, so heartbroken that he could never love himself, until he was transformed into a daffodil.

I think it’s one of Narcissa’s favourite myths for a long time, and when choosing a name it feels almost obvious. Part of her simply genuinely wants to be that beautiful. She wants to be able to look in the mirror and all but fall in love with herself. And she certainly succeeds.

It’s also simply a quiet act of rebellion that no one but her own family would even notice. No one else would actually realise that technically Narcissa isn’t derived from a star, it sounds every bit as pretentious as all the other names. It’s very clever in that way. Only her parents will ever really know just how willing she was to step away from the family for her own sake, until she didn’t have to.

8: A couple of fic recs and ideas

I’ll say there aren’t a lot of works where Narcissa’s explicitly written as trans (there are 23 works in the “trans narcissa black malfoy” tag, and a lot of them are from ships I’m personally not interested in reading). I’ve listed a handful of fics, and a few ideas for stories that I would love to read or write one day.

Excellence by SiriuslySapphic

Yeah yeah I’m starting with a self rec. I’ll also say that though not every Narcissa fic on my page actually goes into detail of Narcissa being trans, all but one WIP is written with trans!narcissa in mind bc that’s just the way I write Narcissa.

Excellence is a Dorcas/Narcissa WIP that starts in fifth year (after the summer that she comes out) and will follow them throughout the first war. It’s about the two of them figuring out who to be in pureblood society, how the war divides everyone, and queerness in the wizarding world with a healthy dose of magical theory later on. It’s not canon compliant (Dorcas doesn’t die), and will be angsty with a happy ending.

A Most Uxorious Tale by TheWakeless

Ux-o-ri-ous def. having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife.

This is 40K words of Lucius/Narcissa with the vibes of Morticia and Gomez Addams. It’s mainly canon compliant with a happy ending and it deals with Narcissa’s transition, her childhood, a lot of dark magic and gaining the Dark Lord’s approval. It’s a detailed look at how queerness exists in the wizarding world, and what it’s like to transition within pureblood society.

Two-way Mirror by Lightinthehallway

So I mentioned just how interesting Sirius and Narcissa’s relationship is freaking interesting and her being trans only increases that complicated dynamic. This fic looks at exactly that, except they’re both trans and it’s a whole thing and there’s pain and betrayal and trust, and I love it. Andromeda’s reaction in this really hurt me, but I also kinda like that complicated take on their relationship. This is also a fascinating look at how coming out goes differently in both branches of the Black family, and how it interacts with existing family dynamics!

And some ideas: I think it’d be so interesting to write about Narcissa a little bit later in life, perhaps while Draco and his friends are growing up. Fics with conversations between Narcissa and Draco, maybe, or him coming out to her later in life?? I also love the the trans!pansy headcanon, and I’d honestly love to see fics or hcs where Narcissa is this kind of role model to younger pureblood kids and just?? Please?

I also really love the idea of Narcissa after the second war getting the chance to live a life for herself, in a world where pureblood society and last names matter a little less than she was used to growing up. Narcissa being able to figure out who she is beyond last names and titles, as long as it may take? (This works beautifully in combination with a lot of different post war ships, too! A current favourite of mine is Remus/Narcissa healing after the war).

(I’m obsessed with Narcissa learning the beauty of individuality and personhood) so another idea is literally any AU that lets her get out of the Black family as it works. Narcissa who gets disowned when she comes out, is devastated, and in the long run finds she’s better for it. Narcissa who runs away willingly when Sirius does, or who ends up on Andromeda’s doorstep shortly after Hogwarts because she’s come to the realisation that she matters as more than a Role.

Conclusion / TLDR

The basics of everything I just said (it’s a grand total of 7K words) can be summarised as “Trans!narcissa comes out at about 15 in a family that values the contribution children make to the family reputation over absolutely everything else. She’s not disowned because her father decides to let her prove herself worthy of carrying the Black name after all, and she genuinely wants to make it her life purpose to basically not let him down. She struggles a lot with the concept of being an individual and does not see this as a problem, but she raises Draco with an insane amount of spoiling and a genuinely healthy dose of you are loved and will never have to fear being thrown out over something you can’t help. Her name is its own little form of rebellion that no one but her parents really notice and it also shows off that she’s a tiny little nerd at heart.”

Otherwise, I don’t really know how to end meta posts like these so…? That was that? I hope this was an interesting read. If anyone has any like questions or recs or just thoughts my inbox is open lmao I love to waste time talking about Narcissa Malfoy.

#narcissa malfoy #harry potter #hp meta #marauders era #dead gay wizards #that's a tag used for the marauders era too right lol #lucissa #draco malfoy #trans headcanon #trans narcissa #hp headcanon #my posts #meta #my meta

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