"Narcissa!"
He ran as fast as his feet could carry him, but it was too late. He could feel his heart in his chest as he burst into the room, and as he took in the sight in front of him, he felt it sink to the ground.
"I'm sorry, Lucius, but you're too late. She's gone."
He heard the words, but they were dulled somehow, as if the voice was coming to him through a tunnel and not from the figure mere yards away from him. His feet moved him across the room on their own accord, but everything seemed to move in slow motion as the bed drew nearer. He sank down on the edge and reached out his hand, as if his touch could bring her back. His hands came back to him, empty, just as his heart now felt.
Lucius' head sank onto the blankets below him, oblivious to the figure still standing near the door, uncaring for once of the weakness his actions showed. He inhaled slowly; he could still smell her scent lingering. He wondered if it would be there long after her body was gone, never to again touch the fabric.
As Lucius continued to inhale his wife's scent, he was overcome with memories and emotions. She had always smelled like this, for as long as he could remember, though now he couldn't remember when he had first recognized it as hers—or when he had understood the significance of it. Was it during their sixth year, when the amortentia that he had brewed in potions class smelled exactly like this? Or was it during that fateful argument, when he had kissed her impulsively and realized that he liked it? Maybe it was after that, their first morning as husband and wife, when he had awoken to her wrapped around him, her gentle breath pushing her body against him as he inhaled the smell of her scent intermingled with his. Or was it even before that, when they were children—when he tried to kiss her and she pushed him away, beginning their years of hostility and rivalry?
Lucius breathed in deeply again, afraid of the day when the scent would no longer linger as it had for so long. This was all his fault; he knew that. So many things in their relationship were his fault. He was the one who had ignored her for so long, who had kept their hostility alive, who had maintained that he could never love the woman his parents had chosen for him. He was the one that mucked things up just as she was starting to fall for him. He was the one that had run away from what he felt for her. And now, he was the one who had caused this, he was the one who was responsible for the loss of his wife. He has done what he had always promised her he would never do—he had put something before his family.
It was a mistake that Lucius would do anything to take back, because as he lay here, on the bed he had shared with his wife just last night, Lucius knew that he couldn't live without Narcissa. It had taken him nearly twenty-three years to realize it, but Lucius Malfoy was nothing without Narcissa Black.
Lucius heard the figure behind him finally leave, but he remained where he was, frozen in an avalanche of realizations-come-too-late. As he thought back on the past that they had shared and the struggles that they had overcome to reach where they were, Lucius Malfoy realized for the first time that this moment—and all that had led to this moment—had less to do with a decision that Abraxas Malfoy and Cygnus Black had made when he and Narcissa were seven and more to do with fate.
It was decided that they would be married; it was destined that they would fall in love.