Stephanie.

she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased

voldemort had actual doubts about snape

narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them. 

look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy. 

say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things. 

marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight. 

masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement. 

narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.  

#voldy was shocked when he found out his mom was the witch #he assumed his father would be magical

Because it makes perfect sense.  Of course Narcissa would turn on Voldemort without a second thought to protect her son. Not only because she’s his mother, but because that’s how Voldemort was defeated the first time around, and Voldemort cannot change or learn. 1980′s Voldemort was defeated because of a mother’s love, Lily’s sacrifice for Harry. Lily was not considered important to Voldemort, only James and Harry were. Voldemort was even willing to spare her for Snape, if she didn’t put up a fight (which of course she did). To him, Lily was irrelevant, because she was a woman and Muggle-born. Voldemort underestimated her, and it cost him. So naturally he would do the same thing again in the 90′s, focusing on Harry and the prophecy, never considering the thing that defeated him before might do so again. He was wary of Lucius and Draco, but underestimated Narcissa and it lead directly to his defeat. And she KNEW he did, and used it to her advantage.

This short-sightedness is even reflected in his most ardent supporter Bellatrix, who was also killed by a furious mother protecting her child.

Voldemort has a history of putting the people his followers love in danger and expecting their unswerving obedience anyway. He lost Snape when he went after Lily. He lost Narcissa Malfoy when he let her husband rot in prison and set her son up to die. 

His followers know, up close and personal, what the Dark Lord is capable of, and they will do whatever they have to do to save their loved ones from his wand. 

Exactly! Voldemort doesn’t understand it, and because of that, it never ever even once occurred him it might backfire on himself. He overlooks love and those who he thinks less of. He looks at the world through this own glasses and in doing so, he utterly, completely fails understanding other people’s ways of thinking. And it’s not like he’s even trying to understand, because he thinks so little of it, he doesn’t think it’s worth even trying to understand it.  And that is his greatest weakness.

almost stumbled